SCRIPT AND SONG IN PINDAR AND AESCHYLUS

Anna S. Uhlig




A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY


RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE
BY THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
Adviser: Andrew Ford

November 2011





Copyright by Anna S. Uhlig, 2011. All rights reserved.




CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

INTRODUCTION 1

PART ONE: SCRIPTED VOICES 30

1. A QUESTION OF VOICE 31

2. A VOICE FROM THE PAST 81

PART TWO: PLAYING PARTS 139

3. TOOLS: OLYMPIAN 13, SEVEN AGAINST THEBES 144

4. SNAKES: SNAKES: CHOEPHOROI, OLYMPIAN 8 181

5. GHOSTS: PERSAI, PYTHIAN 8 218

CONCLUSION 258

BIBLIOGRAPHY 261


""
ABSTRACT

This dissertation, Script and Song in Pindar and Aeschylus, begins from the simple
fact, often obscured by political and social distinctions, that Pindar and Aeschylus were
poetic contemporaries and found success with the same audiences across the Greek
Mediterranean. I argue that they also shared a poetic outlook which reflected large-scale
shifts in the conceptualization of poetry during their historical period. This perspective
stems from their awareness of a written poetic tradition that was by then several centuries
old, and which produced a corresponding concern for the future material longevity and
reperformability of poetic objects. In particular, new realities of reperformance required a
substantial reexamination and redefinition of the temporal conception of poetic voice to
fully integrate the ever more decisive role of writing in facilitating poetic performances. I
argue that Pindar and Aeschylus responded to their changing poetic reality by developing
a scriptory poetics that allowed them to adjust their compositional style to reflect and
reveal their poetry as fixed in writing, thus inhabiting a temporality shaped by the
physical text as well as the presence of an author or an audience.
"""
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I cannot begin to properly thank all of the people who have helped me over the course of
writing this dissertation. My first and most heartfelt thanks go to my wonderful
dissertation committee: Andrew Ford, Froma Zeitlin, Constanze Gthenke, and Marco
Fantuzzi. Their support throughout the stages of this project is hard to fathom, as are the
multitude of ways in which their comments and criticisms have improved not only this
dissertation but my thinking about the field of Classics more broadly. I would also like to
generally thank the faculty and staff of the Princeton Department of Classics who have
made my graduate education such a rich and rewarding experience. Much of the work for
this dissertation was undertaken during periods I spent at the University of Cambridge,
and I would like to extend my gratitude both to the Faculty of Classics and to the Fellows
of Kings College for making a visitor feel so welcome. I owe a special debt to Simon
Goldhill, who has long been a generous and patient reader of my work.
In both Princeton and Cambridge I was fortunate to make a great many remarkable
friends. They have offered company, inspiration, laughter, and advice and I have
benefited hugely from each of their unique perspectives. Such an embarrassment of
riches precludes listing all of their names, but I must single out Adam Gitner, who has
read every page of this project and many of them more than once and who has
improved almost all of them. In addition, I would like to thank Alan Jones, whose
unstinting support over the last few years has been an invaluable source of strength. A
further debt is owed to my philoi, Ira, Myra, Beki, and Michael Silverstein, for their
patience, understanding, and love as I labored away on this project. And finally, I thank
my husband, Stefan H. Uhlig, without whom my life would be tuneless.

1
INTRODUCTION

In the first chapter of his seminal 1985 study Poesia e pubblico nella Grecia antica,
Bruno Gentili set forth a definition of oral poetry that has transformed the study of
Classics.
1
For a work to be called oral, he claimed, it must fulfill at least one of the
following conditions: (1) oral composition (extemporaneous improvisation); (2) oral
communication (performance); (3) oral transmission (memorized poetic tradition).
2

Gentili fashioned his definition to be as broad as possible so as to include texts whose
performative nature had previously been overlooked by scholars. In particular, Gentili
intended his idea of orality to recuperate the conditions musical, social, or political
that originally framed the performance, and thus dictated the composition of the corpus
generally referred to as Archaic Greek lyric poetry. Even if they had been written down at
some point, Gentili declared these works to be characterized by what he called a
performance psychology,
3
a fundamental assumption that Greek lyric poetry is
designed for an oral relationship between performer and audience. More importantly,
Gentili claimed, the contextual conditions surrounding poetic orality were highly
variable, affected by the passage of time no less than by changes of location. Each poet
and poem would demand its own embedded analysis to bring to light the character of its
original oral form.
As Gentilis approach to oral performance was gaining ground in the field of Greek
lyric poetry, the study of Greek tragedy was undergoing its own reconfigurations as
scholars called for a greater recognition of the context in which the plays were
performed. Although this approach did not share Gentilis strong emphasis on the oral
nature of performance, it can nevertheless be seen as a related development insofar as this
new approach identified the key to the interpretation of tragedy in its nature as a
performative (and performed) poetic form. Led by the work of such scholars as Froma
Zeitlin and Simon Goldhill, the past decades have seen the emergence of a new
understanding of Greek tragedy as a product of the political and cultural environment of

1
Gentili (1985).
2
Gentili (1988) p. 4. This and all subsequent quotations are taken from the English translation of
Cole.
3
Gentili (1988) p. 42.
2
fifth-century Athens.
4
By focusing attention on the ways in which tragedy subtly engaged
with the questions of justice, gender, and religious practice at Athens, this approach has
broadened our understanding of how the tragic genre emerged from the culture of the
fifth century, and has pointed to important ways in which the initial performances of
tragedy resist analysis according to modern conceptions of the theater. The impact of
these new models on the study of Greek poetry in the past three decades can hardly be
overstated. Indeed, it could be said that in the period since the publication of Poesia e
pubblico, Gentilis desire to place the public and performative character of Greek poetry
at the center of scholarly investigation has largely been achieved.
Yet the widespread acceptance of Gentilis broad definition of oral poetry has not
been accompanied by a similarly complex approach to the roles that writing played
within this multiform conception of orality. Under the rubric of Gentilis three conditions,
there is potential for a great degree of variation. Gentilis definition does not, and is not
intended to, present a monolithic picture of oral poetry. But it is easy to loose sight of just
how wide a variety of compositional modes can be included in his broad category. An
orally composed poem, such as a Wordsworthian ode, may be preserved and transmitted
only in written form.
5
Conversely, an orally performed poem, such as a Shakespearean
play, may be composed entirely in writing.
6

In order to appreciate how writing might be part of a fuller picture of oral poetry in
Archaic Greece, we need to gain a better sense of how written technology functioned
within a culture of oral performance. As I hope is already clear, I do not wish to dispute
the basic assumptions of Gentilis position and even less would I want to reopen the
longstanding debate which sets written and oral poetry in antagonistic opposition. Rather,
I would like to explore how an approach that rejects the polar opposition of these two
categories can enrich our understanding of Greek poetry as something at once oral and
written. As Andrew Ford has rightly noted, it is possible to grant considerable
significance to the conceptual influence of writing without succumbing to the

4
See especially Goldhill (1986), Winkler and Zeitlin (1990), and the collected articles in Zeitlin
(1996).
5
On Wordsworths complex claims of oral composition, see Bennett (2007).
6
On the complex and fascinating early textual history of Shakespearean drama, see Ogden
(1988), de Grazia and Stallybrass (1993), Werstine (1997), Long (1999).
3
Havelockian position that makes the alphabet an autonomous agent in intellectual
history.
7
By recognizing that writing was an embedded, organic feature of Greek
societies in the archaic era, one which did not threaten, but enriched and expanded the
oral nature of poetic compositions we can gain a more thorough appreciation for the
contextual forces that helped to shape the song culture of the period.
There are many ways in which writing may interact with oral poetry as we have
defined it. One may preserve an oral poem in written form at any time, and there is no
need for such literate status to preclude the fulfillment of any of Gentilis criteria. But
not all acts of writing carry the same force, and we must attend to the specific roles that
writing can play within the broad realm of oral poetics. These functions are indeed
conditioned by their socio-cultural and historical contexts, but they are no less shaped by
the poets own idiosyncratic voice and vision. As we explore to the range of possible
approaches to writing, our picture of the heterodox world of Greek poetry is enriched by
increased detail and descriptive specificity. Of course, sometimes the addition of written
documentation to an oral poem will prove little more than a tangential detail: a factual
or incidental aspect of the poems history, but not one that is fundamentally embedded
in the nature of the poem itself. But at other times, the use of writing is an essential
feature of oral poetics. The grand scale of Homers epics or the bookish allusions of
Aristophanes depend on a conceptual framework that is only made possible by written
technologies. This fact does not render these poets any less oral, but it does mean that
their specific orality cannot be fully appreciated without a detailed understanding of the
role played by writing.
This study explores one such aspect of the interaction of writing with oral poetry:
how the consciousness of written transmission can significantly alter the performative
psychology of a poetic work. In Homeric studies, Egbert Bakker has already
demonstrated how scholarly sensitivity to how a poem imagines its own performance can
help to illuminate the unspoken assumptions and concerns which underpin and structure a
poetic work.
8
It is in a similar vein that I approach the texts of Pindar and Aeschylus. I
argue that the work of these poets, composed for oral performance in the first half of the

7
Ford (2003) p. 17.
8
See especially Bakker (1996) and Bakker (2005).
4
fifth century, was shaped to an exceptional degree by Pindar and Aeschylus awareness
of and sensitivity to the use of written transmission to facilitate the oral performance of
their compositions. I hope to demonstrate that both poets fashioned their performative
texts in response to the contemporary prevalence of writing as a means of transmitting
poetic compositions. As a result, their works themselves exhibit an embedded
performativity which reflects a desire to grapple with the implications written
technologies may have on the art of poetry and the role of the poet. It is my contention
that such a transformation of performative disposition underpins the corpora of both
Pindar and Aeschylus and, furthermore, that these transformations are so closely aligned
in their principal concerns that they are most productively examined as a single, linked
phenomenon.
I describe this change as the invention of a scriptory poetics. Throughout archaic
Greece, poetic culture remained an overwhelmingly oral affair with respect to
performance.
9
Within this oral framework, one radical capacity of writing rested with its
ability to produce sounds at a distance, enabling the author to speak without being
physically present.
10
This type of writing can thus, in the words of Jesper Svenbro,
logically claim to be oral insofar as it is a machine for producing sounds.
11
At times
this verbal power was thought of as a property of the written object itself, an oggetto
parlante whose inanimate material fixity could express the speech of its author.
12
Such
objects funerary monuments that called out to passersby,
13
temple dedications that
spoke of their devotion to a certain god
14
were thought to be imbued with an almost
magical capacity to speak through the metaphorical tongue that had been inscribed upon
them.
15
But not all writing spoke for itself. In particular, poetic texts, intended for oral
performance, required an additional step a translation into the living voice of a

9
There were, of course, exceptions to this rule. As early as the seventh century BC we find poetry
beginning to explore modes of written publication, see below pp. 12-4.
10
A feature identified by Goody and Watt (1968) p. 53. Even if one can no longer claim that this
is an inherent feature of writing per se, it is central to the Greek conception of poetic writing in its
earliest formulations. So Ford (2003), Bakker (1997).
11
Svenbro (1988) p. 2.
12
Steiner (1993).
13
Tueller (2010).
14
Furley (2010).
15
Svenbro (1988) pp. 41-3.
5
performer before they were able to express the words of their absent composer. The
poets words might be conveyed by a written object, but performance the act which
conferred the poems status as song relied on the true voice of a living singer. When we
think about the written form of a poetic text, it is as a facilitator, but not as a part, of a
poetic performance. The poets work would be memorized by actors and singers who
made no use of written documents during the performance event.
The written text was therefore not the same thing as the poets song, but rather served
indirectly as a means to bring about its performance. It was not capable of producing an
oral performance on its own, and thus relied on performers whose singing would
complete its task of remote communication. In this sense, the early written texts of Greek
poetry can be thought of as scripts. A script is a transitional, mediating object. It
allowed for the poem to be fixed in writing, but only in order to enable its oral
performance.
16
These objects had no active role in actual performance, and the extent of
their use in preparation for these events was also likely to be limited. But as a mediator
between poet and performer, the script is a remarkable thing. It allows the poet to convey
his words without being physically present, and thus the script is able to produce poetic
performances even in the poets own absence. It permits, in other words, the poetic work
to be distinguished from its author. The operation of the script itself is highly
circumscribed; its function is limited to its mediating role and is therefore not necessarily
implicated in the act of either poetic composition or performance.
17
But as appreciation
for the scripts mediating function grew, the perception of its impact began to be felt in
realms of the poetic sphere beyond those in which the script was actively employed. The
effect was not an unambiguous or literal one, not as clear cut as a change in the mode of
transmission, but it constituted a figurative, atmospheric influence: a sense that poetry
was becoming scriptory. I contend that for Pindar and Aeschylus, this broadly figurative
idea of the scriptory nature of song gave rise to a concerted meditation on the character of

16
Following Nagys categorization, a text is defined as a script when the written text is a
prerequisite for performance but (unlike the more restricted category of scripture) this
performance presupposed as a necessary condition of the texts publication; Nagy (1996) p.
112.
17
The small number of true readers who would have engaged these texts silently does not bear
on the dynamics of poetic performance.
6
poetic expression: the development of a scriptory poetics that would be expounded and
explored throughout the poets works.
The works and careers of Pindar and Aeschylus offer a number of discernable
connections which might, at first glance, offer fertile grounds for a comparison. Both
were active in the first half of the fifth century BC and found success with the same
audiences across the Greek Mediterranean.
18
At the same time it was once communis
opinio that the two poets were divided by political ideology: Pindar, the aristocratic poet
of tyrannical and oligarchic regimes, Aeschylus, the democratic playwright of the new
order.
19
But such claims are difficult to prove and they are, furthermore, challenged by
our limited surviving evidence, which suggests that both poets were equally at home
amongst various types of political structures.
20
One is thus justified, I believe, in treating
Pindar and Aeschylus as poetic contemporaries in the full sense of the term. This
historical correspondence is further borne out by a number of thematic parallels that are
evident in the poets extant work: most notably, both offer accounts of Agamemnons
murder and the vengeful matricide of his son, and both narrate the events surrounding the
Argive attacks on the city of Thebes.
21
In addition, there are any number of less
prominent thematic commonalities and one must imagine that even more overlap would
appear in the great body of texts that are now lost to us. There is moreover a great range
of figurative images be it through metaphor, simile, epithets, metalepsis, and
periphrasis which connect the two poets on stylistic grounds.
22
My aim is not, however,
to make positive claims connecting the historical careers of the two poets. They may or
may not have met in Athens or at Hierons court in Syracuse, and may or may not have
influenced the form and content of each others subsequent poetic production. Even if it
were possible to demonstrate that these similarities are the result of positive contact and
influence between the two poets (and such historical certainty is all but impossible given

18
Herington (1986) p. 29.
19
See Finley (1955).
20
Much of the presumed political disparity arises from the circumstantial fact that the majority of
Pindars surviving works are epinician compositions, which necessarily are biased towards the
aristocratic class who competed in the athletic competitions.
21
On the two poets treatments of the Oresteia, see Finglass (2007) pp. 11-7. On Theban themes,
Nagy (2000).
22
Silk (1974), Rosenmeyer (1982), Herington (1986) p. 47.
7
the evidence now available), it would add little to our picture of the broader concerns
which underlie the poets scriptory perspectives. Without contextualized historical
foundations, the analysis of discrete thematic or figurative similarities tends to devolve
into purely formal analysis without much purchase on larger questions of poetic outlook.
To explore the question of scriptory poetics, we must look beyond superficial or
biographical correspondences to discover more deeply embedded harmonies that emerge
from the structure of the poems themselves.
A desire to place the poetry rather than the poets in dialogue demands that we
address the question of genre, the factor which would seem to pose the greatest obstacle
to the comparison of Pindar and Aeschylus. The marked distinctions, in terms of formal
and contextual conditions for performance, that set the so-called lyric odes of Pindar
apart from the dramatic works of Aeschylus have generally led to a more or less rigid
segregation overt or implicit of the poets by most contemporary scholars.
23
It is my
contention that these seeming disparities can, if pressed, reveal otherwise imperceptible,
shared poetic features. Since generic identity is profoundly linked to expectations for
poetic performance, attention to genre opens a particularly rich avenue in respect to the
poets understanding of the scriptory nature of their poetry.
In light of recent trends in Classics, the mention of genre might be thought to imply
the idea of function the role that a poem was meant to play, the social, cultural, or
religious task that its performance fulfilled.
24
Thus it is held that Pindars epinician odes
served to celebrate the athletic victor and effect his reintegration into his homeland,
25

while Aeschylean tragedies were designed for the democratic festival of the Great
Dionysia, when the Athenian polis both celebrated and examined its own core beliefs.
26

Whether such a definition is appropriate for individual texts or corpora is not a question
to be debated here. But, as I argue in some detail in the opening chapter of this study, I

23
So Kurke (1991) claims that in terms of its poetics, [Pindaric] epinikion was the antitype to
tragedy p. 6. Notable exceptions amongst recent scholarship are Crotty (1982), Nagy (2000).
24
See the contributions to Depew and Obbink (2000) and more recently, Swift (2010).
25
The drastic circumscription of Pindars epinician odes to their encomiastic function is the
result of Bundy (1962) whose influence on Pindaric studies and beyond is difficult to
underestimate. The social and political contextualization of his work along these lines was
heralded by the work of Crotty (1982) and Kurke (1991).
26
Good introductions to this approach are found in Goldhill (1986), Hall (2009).
8
believe that a functionally driven sense of genre has only limited value to an effort to
examine cross-generic sympathies.
Rather than look to a poems generic function, I suggest that formal properties
particularly those tied to performance are better guides to the similarities and
differences that should be taken into account in comparing the poetry of Pindar and
Aeschylus. From this perspective, we can see the two poets work as aligned in certain
broad respects. Both can be classed as choral poets, making use of the traditional forms
of melic composition intended for performance by a group of singers. This common
feature entails a number of ancillary parallels, such as the central importance of music
and dance within performance and the creation of a performative hic et nunc, an
imaginary reality that exists within the realm of the singers words and actions. At the
same time, in this shared choral identity there are also important differences that
distinguish the poets compositions. Most immediately significant is the divergence of
dictional mode: the voice in which the poets work is presented. Pindars odes are
primarily monologic (diegetic) in voice, presented as the first-person expression and
narration of a single speaker who claims to be the poet himself. By contrast, Aeschylean
drama is dialogic (mimetic), a polyphonic exchange between multiple speakers, none of
whom claims to be the poet. Taking account of this structural divergence is an inherent
and necessary feature of a comparative treatment of the two poets. But I hope to
demonstrate that, when viewed through the lens of scriptory poetics, these differences
provide a remarkably fertile ground for exploring the underlying similarities in the poets
conception of their work and in their compositions shared performative psycholology.

The Importance of Writing
One pressing question is why Pindar and Aeschylus should be so acutely concerned with
the idea of writing when by the end of the sixth-century BC, as they started their careers,
the technical and conceptual revolution made possible by the introduction of alphabetic
writing in Greece had been underway for nearly three centuries.
27
In order to answer this

27
On the date of the first alphabetic writings, see Harris (1989) pp. 45-6, Powell (2009) pp. 235-
7.
9
question, we must take stock of what is at issue when we talk about writing and literacy
in Archaic Greece.
Following the groundbreaking work of Parry and Lord, debates both inside and
outside of the discipline of Classics sought to chart the contours of orality and
literacy as socio-political identities with inherently distinct characteristics and effects.
28

Writing was treated as though it had a single, identifiable essence and its advent in
Greece was thought to have sparked an almost automatic process of forward progress.
More recently, the idea that writing carries a set of intrinsic attributes has been more or
less rejected and scholars have generally adopted a more contextually driven model that
looks to the particular manifestations of writing under specific social and political
conditions. By examining varieties of writing across the four continents, scholars have
begun to put together a heterodox picture of writing and literacy, demonstrating how the
influence of written technologies differs significantly depending on the cultural context in
which they are put to use.
29
Western models of writing that were once thought to
demonstrate universal truths are now understood to be highly contingent, and many of
our less well founded assumptions about the impact of writing have been contradicted by
evidence of alternate approaches to literacy around the world.
This new, contextualized approach to writing has also had important consequences
for our understanding of the history of written technology in the ancient Greek world.
Even in the context of Archaic Greece, reactions to writing differed greatly from city to
city, and most importantly for our present investigation were highly modulated by the
type and purpose of written activity. Public inscriptions conceptualize the written word in
a way that differs greatly from dedicatory graffiti and these again are distinguished from
funerary and sculptural inscription. The great range of written evidence that has survived

28
Parry (1971), Lord (1960), Lord (1995). Important contributions to the debate have been made
by Havelock (1963), Havelock (1986), Goody (1968), Ong (1982). A good bibliographic survey
of work in Classics is offered by Fantuzzi (1980) and Thomas (1992). More recently, as the
localized nature of writing and literacy has become better understood, scholarship in the area has
become much more specialized in approach, with few venturing the types of broad claims that
once characterized the debate.
29
As Rosalind Thomas has argued that the effects or implications of literacy [are] heavily
dependent on whatever society is using it. The variety in the possible uses of literacy is now
abundantly clear []. They seem very largely determined by the customs and beliefs, not to
mention the political and social system, already in place. Thomas (1992) p. 22. See also,
Andersen (1989).
10
points to a variegated and diverse reaction to writing throughout the Greek
Mediterranean, and we must assume that many more facets of this complex picture have
been lost to the passage of time. Furthermore, although the interrelationship of written
and oral modes of communication and memory is a fundamental aspect of certain types
of writing, not all writing should be thought of as the visual representation of speech.
Often the graphic function of written communication stands entirely outside the realm of
the spoken word, creating its own systems of signification beyond the oral capacities of
language. As Rosalind Thomas has argued, the early period of writing in Greece reveals
the exploration of a broad range of possible approaches to the written word, many of
which we do not yet fully understand.
30
Thus we must not just avoid drawing
universalizing conclusions about the impact of alphabetic writing or literacy from the
evidence of archaic Greece, we should also be attentive to distinctions within the Greek
context which, from the start, contained a multiplicity of literacies within it.
31

One general trend that emerges with some clarity from this complicated picture is the
veritable explosion of diverse and heterodox forms of writing throughout the Greek world
in the sixth century. Epigraphic evidence from this period is far greater that of the
previous two centuries,
32
and we begin to find inscriptions of all types public legal
declarations, religious dedications, as well as funerary monuments both public and
private. We find a significant increase in the use of public writing across the Greek world
as laws and proclamations were committed to stone and bronze for all to see, and coins
carried written messages alongside iconic representations.
33
But the broad proliferation of
civic writing also witnessed the development of localized traditions, such as the political
institution of ostracism at Athens or the large-scale inscription of trade laws in merchant
cities such as Eretria, Argos, and Elis.
34
In Syracuse, the sixth-century temple to Apollo
was inscribed along the pediment to identify the maker of the temple columns: kala erga

30
Thomas (1992) esp. chapters. 4 and 5.
31
The importance of using the plural, literacies, is reflected in the title of a recent volume on
Greco-Roman approaches to writing: Johnson and Parker (2009).
32
Harris (1989) pp. 47-9.
33
Harris (1989) pp. 50-6.
34
Gagarin (2008) p. 82.
11
in honor of the god.
35
Outside of the civic context, inscriptions were also abounding.
36

The incorporation of writing, particularly for grave markers, developed a confident,
almost formalized style that reflects a degree of comfort with and command of the written
form as its use became more widespread.
37
The language of dedicatory and funerary
monuments begins to shift away from what Svenbro has called their earlier egocentric
disposition, in which inscriptions voiced in the first person beckoned to passers-by to
converse with the dead.
38
No longer asserting their status as oggetti parlanti, these stone
and metal monuments cede their previously internalized agency to that of the reader,
whom the sculptor could now rely upon to engage correctly with words set in stone or
bronze.
39
At the same time, vase painters begin to deploy letters both to label the figures
on their work and as decorative features in their own right.
40
This is the great period of
so-called nonsense inscriptions: written objects that do not convey their messages
through grammatically coherent expressions, but rather rely on the visual power of the
alphabet itself to communicate meaning.
41
One of the most fascinating examples of this
practice, dating to the late seventh and early sixth centuries, is the dedication of
abecedaria graffiti at the temple of Zeus Semios at Mt. Hymettos.
42
The dedications
found at the temple often contain only a single letter, or a list of letters, most often in
alphabetical order, as if the mere fact of inscribing the written form was an act of
devotion to the god of symbols.
43
Lead curse tablets, which begin to appear around the
sixth century primarily in Attica and Sicily, demonstrate another intriguing way in which
writing was working its way into Greek thinking. The tablets, on which spells to harm an
enemy by binding are inscribed, adopt the material form of the written document into
their magical formula. The creator of the tablet would ask that his foe be, through
sympathetic magic, made hard and fast just like the lead on which his words were

35
The restored text reads: !"#$[%#&]#' ()*+#,# -./)0"*&1. 2* !&131#+34. 5 ()10"# ,-6"#14
54"7 !0894. Guarducci (1983).
36
Immerwahr (2008).
37
Sourvinou-Inwood (1995) pp. 279-97.
38
Svenbro (1988) pp. 26-43.
39
This is not to say that literacy at this time was prevalent, but that the use of inscription had
developed a tradition which assumed that those who could read would be familiar with its forms.
40
Slater (1999), Lissarrague (1999), Osborne and Pappas (2007), Hedreen (2009).
41
Pappas (2004) pp. 47- 51, Immerwahr (2007).
42
Langdon (1976), Thomas (1992) p. 60.
43
Henrichs (2003) pp. 50-2.
12
written.
44
Most often these early tablets inscribe only the name of the intended victim; the
written word alone was powerful enough to work the spell.
Within this boisterous outpouring of written texts, one of the most significant shifts is
not documented by epigraphic evidence and has left little trace in the historical record.
Perhaps the most important of all the modes of writing that flourished in the sixth century
was the emerging genre of written prose.
45
The rise of prose writers is generally
associated with the intellectual climate of the eastern Mediterranean and the so-called
Ionian Enlightenment, but prose writers were found throughout the Greek world in the
sixth century.
46
Setting aside the poetic forms that had dominated all areas of Greek
wisdom, these prose authors set out their theories of natural history, physics, and the
divine in prose treatises.
47
They wrote ethnographic, mythical, and local histories, and
even set out to analyze the work of the great poets, offering interpretations of their verses
in the new language of prose. We know the names, and even possess fragments of the
work of some of these figures: Anaximander of Miletus, Akousilaus of Argos, Hecataeus
of Miletus, Theagenes of Rhegium, Heraclitus of Ephesus, Pherecydes of Athens.
48
But
for the most part the period remains murky and our sense of the importance of these
authors is mostly gleaned from the writings of the successors on whose work their
groundbreaking prose experiments had such a profound impact.
49

Within the world of poetry, it is evident that writing was an influential force from
more or less the time of its introduction to Greece.
50
Amongst our earliest evidence of
writing are verse graffiti that demonstrate an interaction between writing and poetry that
can be traced to the first experiments with the new alphabetic technology. The famous
Nestors cup found in Pithacusae and dated to c. 730-20 and the Dipylon vase from
Athens (dated c. 740-30) both record short lines of verse which allude to broader poetic

44
Collins (2008) pp. 65-6.
45
Goldhill (2002).
46
The evidence for writers of this period is reviewed, with bibliography, by Granger (2007) pp.
412-6. Overviews of the debate concerning the written or oral status of these texts are found in
Ferrari (1984), Laks (2001), Pal (2005). For a slightly more heterodox picture, see the
contributions to Robb (1983).
47
Lloyd (1987), Thomas (2000), Morgan (2000) pp. 45-88, Goldhill (2002) pp. 4-8.
48
Pherecydes perhaps dates from the early fifth century. Fowler (1996) p. 8.
49
Fowler (1996),
50
The extreme claim that writing was adopted in Greece in order to preserve poetic works has
been put forward by Powell (1991).
13
traditions.
51
This evidence cautions against too readily dismissing the idea that writing did
not significantly impact on how poetry was received in the earliest phases of its use in
Greece.
52
In the sixth century, poetic inscriptions continue to document the intersection
between written and oral poetic culture. Our rich trove of funerary epigram reveals a
poetic tradition adapting to new possibilities of written communication.
53
As kouros
sculptures began to incorporate verse epigrams inscribed across a figures legs,
54
and
temple dedications were regularly adorned with lines of poetry,
55
the question of whether
such poems were still primarily intended for oral performance becomes hard to
determine. Certainly, even if oral performance were still envisaged, an added element of
graphic presentation, of the visual aesthetics of the written form, had begun to enter into
the world of poetry. Yet most poetic texts from the period were not preserved in stone,
and the signs of writing that are to be found in such compositions differ markedly from
their inscriptional counterparts.
56
Poems begin to wonder about tokens, prints, and stamps
exploring myths and metaphors of writing, as Deborah Steiner has called them, that hint
at the poets awareness of writing without explicitly naming the new technology.
57
One of
the most dynamic of these reflections on writing is the use of so-called sphragis in lyric
poetry of the sixth century, most notably in the work of Theognis, but also in
contemporary hymns.
58
The sphragis imprinted the poets identity on his work, like a
stamp on a coin or a seal, both to safeguard and to identify the composition for the
future.
59
Although the sphragis is not proof of the poets use of writing, it mirrors the
dual aspects of possession and material safekeeping that frequently emerge in early Greek
experiments with the written form. The authors stamp verifies the authenticity of his
first-person speech, and the poet ensures that his voice will be recognized in the words

51
Watkins (1976), Thomas (1992) pp. 58-9, West, S. (1994), Osborne and Pappas (2007) pp. 133-
5.
52
Henrichs (2003) pp. 46-7, Powell (2009) pp. 238-40.
53
Day (2010), Baumbach, Petrovic and Petrovic (2010).
54
See Lorenz (2010).
55
Furley (2010).
56
For a sense of the range, see the explorations of Detienne and Camassa (1988), Rosenmeyer
(1997), Carson (1998).
57
Steiner (1994) pp. 4-5.
58
On Theognis, see Ford (1985), Pratt (1995), Edmunds (1997). On the general form and
development of the topos, Kranz (1961).
59
Steiner (1994) pp. 89-90.
14
sung by subsequent performers. The form hints at the emerging awareness that writing
has enabled a degree and kind of separation and distance between author and poem that
had not previously been imagined. And as poets began to think of their compositions as
possessing their own future apart from, and indeed far more expansive and long-lasting
than, that of their makers, they also began to explore new categories of authorship
enabled by the written word.
One might be tempted to treat poetry as yet another micro-climate in the contextual
geography of writing in Archaic Greece. But as even my brief survey of examples above
serves to demonstrate, we should be wary of assigning a single role or character to the
poetic use of writing. The elegiac verses of Theognis are as concerned with the
implications of written technology as those of the funerary epigrams whose meter they
share, but the form this interest takes is far from uniform. Whereas the epigrams explored
the new possibilities of their permanent material status, Theognis speech looks to how
writing can enable a metaphoric permanence of oral reperformance and the preservation
of his voice through the faithful repetition of his song. Poetic experimentation with
written technology did not follow a single course of evolution nor did it manifest itself in
a homogeneous or predictable fashion. Throughout the archaic period we find poets who
variously expose and conceal, confront and deny the influence of writing on their work.
Just as Gentili has shown us that we must treat poetic orality as a prismatic and multiform
concept, so poetic literacy also needs to be considered in the plural: as a heterodox
collection of poetic literacies that are constantly renegotiating their relationship to the
world around them.
Choral poetry, with its distinctive formal properties, carves out its own odd space
within this multifaceted world of poetic literacies. It is generally true that the impact of
the new technologies of writing on poetry in archaic Greece is distinguished from other
forms of early literacy by the continued importance of oral performance.
60
But this
general truth takes on a particularly charged significance when applied to choral poetry.
More than other contemporary forms of poetry, choral song was tied to its ephemeral,
occasional character by the central importance of musical and visual aspects that

60
Of course, poetry was not the only form of writing to retain a close tie between spoken and
written communication.
15
functioned alongside the verbal components in performance. When we speak of choral
poetry in its sixth- and fifth-century contexts, we should remember that it was as much a
spectacle of (now lost) music and dance as of the words which have been transmitted
across the millennia. In fact, one of the remaining mysteries surrounding the use of
written technology for the preservation of melic song is the question of how it might have
conveyed information concerning music and dance.
61
Was there musical notation that
accompanied written texts, as there came to be in the Hellenistic period? Or does the
omission of such details reflect the continued hybrid status of the choral script, which
relied on the oral transmission of elements beyond the words themselves?
62
Given the
state of our evidence, it seems unlikely that these questions will ever be conclusively
answered. But whatever the capacity of writing to convey non-verbal information, its
limitations in the face of the insistently performative nature of choral poetry remain all
too plain. Because the spectacle of oral performance, with the attending components of
music and dance, is essential to the identity of archaic Greek melos (including tragedy), it
requires a greater imaginative leap to conceive of a written text as an integral part of
these choral songs. Even when it is their de facto function, it is difficult to see exactly
how written melic texts can be machines for sound, when their silent materiality
appears so obviously incompatible with the dynamism of the oral performance which
they enable.
63
It is therefore unsurprising that it was not until this relatively late period
that composers of melic song found ways to integrate writing with their idea of choral
poetics.
It is my contention that by the end of the sixth-century awareness of the inescapable
role of writing in preserving and transmitting poetic compositions had reached a critical
phase for poets working in these most emphatically performative genres. And I argue that
this awareness spurred Pindar and Aeschylus (and likewise Simonides, Bacchylides, and

61
The question is discussed by West, M. L. (1994) pp. 259-3, Hagel (2009) pp. 1-51, 442-53,
Giordano-Zecharya (2003). The ancient evidence is collected in Phlmann and West (2001).
62
As Thomas notes, such combination of oral and written communication was a regular
phenomenon across the Greek work. Thomas (1992) p. 76, also Henrichs (2003).
63
Indeed, it is possible that the archaic poets own difficulty in accepting this seemingly illogical
relationship between written text and oral performance is also the motivation behind
contemporary scholarships general rejection of writing as a significant factor in archaic Greek
poetic composition.
16
countless other poets whose names or works are lost) to actively confront the hybrid
nature of their poetic works, exploring their dual status as both performed and written,
occasional and immortal, ephemeral and materially permanent. This reconfiguration
required the poets to develop a model of written fixity that incorporated oral performance
and, more importantly, one that included an idea of authorship robust enough to link the
poet to a future performance from which he would himself be absent. Scriptory poetics,
as defined in this study, is designed to achieve precisely that. On the one hand, the
scriptory perspective of the poet mobilizes a broad conceptual framework in which the
material, written script must function in concert with living agents of reperformance so as
to bring a poets song to life. On the other hand, the script is able to transmit the authority
of the poets own voice so that the composer of a written script can be seen as responsible
for a poetic performance without actually participating in it.
This scriptory dynamic extends the spatio-temporal range of the poem, linking it
across time and space to the contrasting indexes of its composition and performance. In
the scripts past stands the poet, the absent author of the song who has imbued the written
object with his words but also with the marker of his authorial presence. In its future lies
the possibility of performance, bringing the silent script back to life through the voices of
the poets vicarious reperformers. The spatio-temporal distance that the script is able to
bridge produces a scriptory landscape of detachment in which the acts of composition
and performance stand at a reciprocal remove from one another. While there is a literal
aspect to this operation a historical reality of composition and reperformance it is the
figurative, imaginary dynamic of this scriptory mindset that best reflects the poets
engagement with the complexities of their new poetic world. Pindar and Aeschylus
situate the often vertiginous displacements of this spatio-temporal matrix at the heart of
their work, deploying complex dictional tropes and figurative structures to explore how
their poems may navigate the distances that scriptory poetics requires them to travel. The
poet himself must stand apart from his work, trusting in the scriptory structure to ensure
its proper performance. This distance is already present in nuce in Homers great epics,
64

whose stichic verse form was, like the elegiacs it so closely resembles, more readily
detached from its immediate performance context than the complex cola of choral song.

64
Ford (1992), Bakker (2005).
17
But for melos, the acceptance of a gap between composition and performance demands a
far more sophisticated frame of reference, and a firmer comprehension of the role that
writing as an agent of fixity, ownership, and material presence had come to play
within Greek culture more generally.
Our understanding of developments in melic song culture certainly suggests a
growing use of writing in this period. The increasingly pan-Hellenic status of
exceptionally accomplished composers is likely to have lead to a more regular
transcription of their poems in written form, whether to be retained as agalmata by the
patron, to travel in lieu of the poet himself (who performed in more locations than he
could physically visit), or to spread the fame of the composition in other locations.
65

Traveling choruses allowed for the frequent exchange of song between different cities at
central religious sites such as Delos and Delphi, leading to the greater commodification
of melic poetry.
66
But how these poems came to be written down, whether by the poet in
the act of creation or by a scribe after the poem had been composed orally, is not a
question for our present study. The scant evidence for this period severely limits any
attempt to give an account of these technical aspects of the history of poetic writing. We
have little non-inscriptional evidence of writing from before the third century B.C. and
none from the fifth century, so even speculative claims about the form that scripts would
have taken cannot be ventured. Our earliest accounts of the use of writing for poetic
composition or performance come from the late fifth and early fourth century, but give
little beyond the most cursory sense of how written texts might have been used and are
nevertheless products of a later period of poetic production and performance. Rather than
attempt a chiefly speculative history of material conditions a study of what types of
writing medium were used, how many people would have had access to the script, or how
components of music and dance were recorded we will follow the lead of the evidence
we do possess, namely the poetic works themselves. These texts prompt us instead to
identify the key developments of the period in terms of a new conceptual apparatus that
reconfigured the basic structures of poetic expression on the model of the script.

65
Herington (1985) pp. 41-57.
66
Kowalzig (2007) pp. 56-7, 188-92.
18
A watershed moment, if one is needed, can be identified in the late sixth-century with
the emergence of tragedy. Although it has often gone unnoted in discussions of how and
why poetry found new expression in tragic drama, the fundamental generic property of
the form, i.e. the fully mimetic dialogue between multiple characters, is predicated on the
concept if not, perhaps, the literal use of a written script.
67
The polyphony of tragic
performance, which requires multiple actors to take on the various roles of the mimetic
drama, necessitates that the poet be divorced from the performance of his poetry. Even if,
as some assert, the playwright participated in the inaugural performance of his work, he
would still have needed to rely on the other performers to impersonate the full range of
characters to whom his words had given voice.
68
Thus tragedy embraces the separation of
poet from performance that writing has made possible, adopting a form that relies on an
extreme and unmistakable instantiation of written culture. Connected to the separation of
poet and performance is a second poetic assumption that is based on the concept of a
written script: the unity of the poetic work.
69
With the full mimesis of tragic drama, the
authors role was not simply to compose the poem, but to represent the unarticulated
foundations that linked the disparate voices of polyphonic performance into a single,
unified dramatic poem.
Recognizing the necessarily scriptory nature of the tragic genre presents us with an
elegant double paradox. On the one hand, the most emphatically, inherently performative
of all the kinds of Greek poetry is also revealed to be the most dependent on the written
word. On the other hand, the full mimesis made possible by the adoption of writing
entails that the poet never speaks in his own voice about the scriptory poetics that is
embedded at fundamental levels of his work.
70
Yet this latter fact does not mean that
tragedy is unable to reflect on its own scriptory nature. Mentions of writing and its uses

67
The point is made by Segal (1986) pp. 77-8, also Wise (1998), Henrichs (2003) pp. 56-7 en
passant.
68
This fact is perhaps reflected in Aristotles developmental model of tragedy, in which poets
first participated in their dramas as actors and were subsequently left off the stage entirely: (Rhet.
1403 21-4), discussed by Clay (1998) p. 27.
69
On the development of the idea of poetic unity in Greek thought, see Ford (1997).
70
In tragedy, where the poet never speaks in his own person, this kind of self-conscious
textuality [i.e. such as is found in lyric] can work only implicitly, behind the dramatic spectacle.
Segal (1986) p. 97.
19
are prevalent throughout tragedy from our earliest extant examples.
71
As Patricia
Easterling has argued, the idea of written preservation and transmission had clearly, and
by no means accidentally, entered into the imagination of the tragic poets in much the
same way as had the idea of the theater in which their plays were performed.
72

Aeschylus often refers to written texts in his dramatic compositions. All of our extant
plays as well as a good number of fragments preserve moments of direct engagement
with written technology. In a famous segment of the enigmatic Dike fragment, Justice
herself is said to record the evil deeds of men upon the deltos of Zeus to ensure that their
future punishments will not be neglected.
73
Elsewhere Aeschylus readily refers to writing,
be it public inscriptions,
74
tablets or papyri to be conveyed by messenger,
75
or embossed
metal letters on a heros shield blazon.
76
But the clearest picture of Aeschylus
consciousness of writing emerges not from these explicit mentions, but from what I will
describe as his symbolic and allegorical representations of scriptory forms. Yet, as
tragedy developed and the shape of the genre grew more distinct, the explicit
representation of written technologies became an increasingly prominent element of the
dramatic stage.
77
By the latter half of the fifth century tragedy and, even more
emphatically, its para-genre, comedy,
78
had come to incorporate ever more insistent
meditations on writing and written technologies into the heart of their dramatic vision.
Euripides regular reliance on written communication to advance his plots offers one

71
Easterling (1985) pp. 4-5.
72
Easterling states that the way that tragedians refer to writing seems to me exactly comparable
with the vague way in which the tragedians allude to their own medium, the theatre. There are
many instances of self-reference in Greek tragedy, but there is no explicit use of play-imagery or
of words which have an unequivocal reference to contemporary institutions: words like
-849:13+4, ;04-8:&, 38<%4 would be too 'modern', just the kind of anachronism that is
studiously avoided. Easterling (1985) p. 6.
73
98=>*?,4 -@%)"45A%4-. (& 30"-:1 B1$' / [] 3C )+&45.@&4)-6,,#1' 545D&; fr, 281a21-
2 Radt. Cf. Sup. 707-9: -E 978 -#5$&-:& ,0F4' / -8+-*& -$3' (& ;#,%+*1' / B+54' 90984)-41
%#91,-*-+%*?.
74
Ag. 1334.
75
Sup. 946-9.
76
Sept. 434, 468, 646-8. Discussed below pp. 164-80.
77
All three playwrights composed plays with the title Palamedes, most likely dramatizing the
heros greatest accomplishment, the invention of writing. These plays are now lost, and the few
remaining fragments tell us little about their form or content. Had these texts survived, we would
possess the ideal means to trace the development of tragic approaches to writing through the
perspectives of the genres three greatest practitioners.
78
On comedy as paratragedy, see Silk (2000).
20
indication of the signal importance of writing on the tragic stage.
79
Phaedras letter to
Theseus allows her to speak false words from beyond the grave and doom her stepson to
his untimely end.
80
Somewhat differently, Iphigeneias letter, dictated by the illiterate
priestess and read out onstage at her insistence, enables the pivotal recognition of the
estranged siblings, Iphigeneia and Orestes, in the Iphigeneia in Tauris.
81
And it is surely
no coincidence that the first representation of silent reading in the Greek world asserts its
connection to the world of the stage three times over when Dionysus, the god of the
theatre, is found reading a text of Euripides in Aristophanes paratragic comedy, the
Frogs.
82

Fragments from Euripides Theseus (fr. 382 N = Athen. 454b-c) and Agathons
Telephos (TrGF 39 F4 = Athen. 454d) provide an even more unambiguous glimpse of
tragedys preoccupation with writing.
83
Both passages, preserved in Athenaeus
Deipnosophistai, contain an ekphrastic description of letters as perceived by an illiterate
herdsman. The lively ekphrases turn the word into a riddle:
84
the sigma is described as a
lock of hair or a Scythian bow, the epsilon a trident on its side. And as the rustic
describes each letter in turn, the audience read his oral performance (perhaps as they
gazed upon the word itself), learning that the letters spell the name of Theseus. The
conceit is traced back by Athenaeus to Sophocles now lost satyr play, Amphiaraos, in
which it is claimed that a character danced out letters onstage (-7 98=%%4-4 []
/8*6%#&*& Athen. 454f), and forward into the work of the fourth-century dramatist
Theodectas of Phaselis. But the most fascinating example that Athenaeus records, and the
one that introduces his dramatic musings, comes from so-called Alphabet Show of the
comic poet Callias.
85
Although many details of the play remain obscure, the extant
fragments present us with a drama in which the chorus was composed of the 24 letters of

79
Torrance (2010).
80
See the detailed treatment of Goff (1990).
81
Segal (1986) pp. 102-5, Steiner (1994) pp. 35-6.
82
Harris (1989) p. 84.
83
As Svenbro comments regarding these instances of explicit contemplation, these moments
make visible what is normally concealed in the theater that is, writing. Svenbro (1988) p.
186.
84
This is the motivation for Athanaeus quotations.
85
On the identity of the author, see Rosen (1999) pp. 147-9.
21
the Ionic alphabet.
86
The play seems to have been an intensely paratragic affair,
87
and may
even have included Euripides and Sophocles as characters on the stage.
88
The Alphabet
Show not only borrows the topos, familiar from tragic drama, of explicit meditation on
written script, but explores its more ribald potentials in the context of paratragic
meditations.
89
Like its tragic models, Callias play presents the written word as a thing of
joy and wonder, an accomplishment intriguing enough to entertain a sophisticated theater
audience, and one which gained much of its appeal from its deep connections to the tragic
stage.
90
These fragments present celebrations of the technology of writing in its most
basic form,
91
and offer clear evidence of an appreciation for, even delight in, the close
bond between tragedy and the written word.
For Aeschylus, meditation on how drama relies on writing does not take such overt
and concrete forms. Rather, the need to understand the full range and the implications of
his scriptory poetics compels the playwright to embed his explorations of written
technology within larger, more illusive structures of symbolic meaning. As we shall see,
at those times when he does examine writing explicitly, he incorporates it in a broader
semiotic field, such as the shield devices of the Seven Against Thebes, or encodes it
tacitly within the actions of his characters, as with the frenzied prophecies of Cassandra
in the Agamemnon, the recognition scene between Orestes and Electra in the Choephoroi,
or the military expedition of Xerxes in the Persai. The interpretation of these scenes as
driven by scriptory concerns is not an anachronistic retrojection. We may, perhaps, find
early confirmation in Aeschylus ancient readers that these moments were understood as
the implicit meditations on writing and scriptory poetics. In the allusive engagements of
Sophocles and Euripides, we can see the subtle forms of Aeschylus scriptory figurations
brought more clearly into literal expression. The insistence in Sophocles Trachiniae on
the written form of Heracles prophecies explicitly recasts Cassandras ravings in terms

86
Phlmann (1971).
87
On the paratragic character of the play, see Phlmann (1971), Rosen (1999). A differing
interpretation of the play is offered by Ruijgh (2001).
88
Gagn (forthcoming 2011).
89
Rosen (1999), Slater (2002).
90
Svenbro (1988) pp. 183-6.
91
In this respect, these passages are not unlike the abecedaria graffiti found at Mt. Hymettos.
22
of written technologies.
92
Similarly, when Euripides reconfigures the recognition scene of
Choephoroi as the meeting of Iphigeneia and Orestes in the Iphigeneia in Tauris, he
transforms the tokens of recognition the lock and the footprints which he had ridiculed
in his Electra into a written document.
93
Euripides draws out the scriptory themes that
are subtly embedded in the Aeschylean scene, making his interpretation explicit through
the use of a true deltos to facilitate the recognition.
94
Although I cannot offer any detailed
examination of such richly allusive moments in this study, the fact that Aeschylus
successors were compelled to adapt his scriptory figurations to suit their own dramatic
compositions can help the modern reader to better appreciate the subtle forms of
Aeschylus often enigmatic and illusive scriptory imagination.
Non-dramatic melic genres, such as the epinicians, partheneia, dithyrambs, and paians
that Pindar composed, did not depend on written technology for their existence. But by
the beginning of the fifth century they were nonetheless also beginning to confront the
question of writing. Perhaps influenced by the success of dramatic composition, lyric
poets developed an interest in the possibilities of writing for the purpose of their own
poetic works. Bacchylides offers one expression of this cross-generic experimentation in
his fourth dithyramb, where the influence of dramatic form is unambiguous. The
dithyramb is composed in a fully dialogic (mimetic) mode: the poem is comprised
entirely of the exchange of paired stanzas between a Chorus of Athenians and King
Aegeus as they anticipate the arrival of Theseus at Athens.
95
Not only are the characters
fully mimetic, but without an authoritative narrator, the poem exists entirely within the
imaginary hic et nunc in which the action unfolds.
96
By contrast with Bacchylides, Pindar

92
On the persistent and elaborate allusive modeling of the Trachiniae on Aeschylus
Agamemnon, see Kraus (1991). On the importance of oracles and their written status, Segal
(2000).
93
On the relationship between the Iphigeneia in Tauris and the Choephoroi, see Zeitlin (2005).
On the specific use of the letter as recognition token, Segal (1986) pp. 102-5, Longo (1981) p. 61,
Steiner (1994) pp. 35-6.
94
Segal (1986) pp. 102-5.
95
The prominence of Theseus in these passages may simply be coincidental, or it may be a result
of Theseus characterization as a civilizing hero. Particularly apposite in this regard is the means
by which he conquered the Minotaur, marking his progress through the labyrinth with a thread a
feat not unlike that of writing itself.
96
On Bacchylides tragic sensibility, see Burnett (1985) pp. 114-28, Pfeijffer (1999a). The
complex temporality of the poem is examined by Wind (1964).
23
does not adopt the formal features of tragedy in his poetic experimentations. Rather his
exploration of the scriptory nature of his compositions exploits the presence of a first-
person voice of the poet within his monologic (diegetic) works. In so doing, Pindar
provides us with an almost inexhaustible range of authorial reflections on his poems
scriptory status.
Pindars desire to place himself unmistakably at the heart of his compositions, to
ensure that his voice be heard in the oral performances of his poetry, might at first seem
to mitigate against the type of scriptory interest exhibited by his dramatic contemporary.
But in fact, by drawing attention to his role in the creation of his poems, Pindar uncovers
an expansive field for scriptory exploration. Because scriptory poetics finds its dynamic
potential in the distance between the poet and his song, that is, in the gap that the script
opens up between an author and the performance of his work, Pindars insistent inclusion
of his authorial, compositional voice within the performative language of his poetry
yields a heightened level of consideration and exploitation of the spatio-temporal
characteristics of the scriptory structure. Techniques such as oral subterfuge create the
impression of ex tempore composition which permits the poet to appropriate the vicarious
performing voices that will turn his words into speech.
97
The poet is thus able to
participate in the performance of his composition, even if he is not physically present. He
turns the moment of performance into a re-enactment of his own compositional activities,
unsettling the hic et nunc reality of performance through the introduction of alternative
spatio-temporal locations. Conversely, Pindar regularly balances these moments of the
poets vicarious presence against indexical statements that refer not to the moment of
performance, but to an act of composition that precedes the oral performance. Whereas
oral subterfuge turns the performance into a compositional event, these prospective
moments deny the performance a stable hic et nunc, placing the anticipated oral
expression of the song in the future of its own performance.
This operation of doubled temporal deixis was first explored by Giovan Battista
DAlessio, who demonstrated that Pindar often makes use of two interdependent but
conflicting deictic origines, that of the poems composition (what DAlessio calls

97
The term was coined by Carey (1981) p. 5.
24
Coding Time) and its subsequent performance (Receiving Time).
98
At times,
compositional claims of the author cannot be located within the parameters of the poems
performance in receiving time (thus constituting oral subterfuge), but shift the indexical
center backward to the time of the poems composition. The doubling of the poems
indexical center calls attention the authors absence from the performance, to the spatial
and temporal distance between the poems two points of hic et nunc. As DAlessio
explains:
Pindar does not pretend in these cases to stage his songs as impromptu performances;
instead he dramatizes the process of their creation their history before the
performance even creating in some cases a gap between text and performance. The
expected text is replaced by another one, a mimesis of the process of its own
production. The poet exploits the separation between text and performance while
apparently effacing it.
99


Through his exploitation of temporal deixis, Pindar stages the double status of his poetic
speech, which belongs simultaneously to two times (composition and performance) and
two voices (the poets and the performers). Pindars temporal deixis exposes the
separation that is tacitly exploited by tragedy in its own, fully mimetic staging. Both
poetic forms rely on two distinct origines, with a first beginning that corresponds to the
authors act of composition and a second that occurs when the text is performed. These
compositions are located, to paraphrase Charles Segal, both in the physical, public space
of oral performance and in the imagined, conceptual world of the script.
100

We can see this double status being explored in the opening image of Olympian 6,
where Pindar meditates on the proper way to begin his song. The passage has been rightly
praised as amongst the poets most compelling, and its value as a complex reflection of
Pindars own conception of his poetic work has often been noted. Adapting the elements
of monumental architecture to his own, poetic ends, Pindar offers an extended figurative

98
D'Alessio (2004) p. 271.
99
D'Alessio (2004) p. 270. Although the majority of DAlessios examples are drawn from
Pindar, he argues that conflicting temporal deixis is by no means a Pindaric, or even a Greek,
idiosyncrasy, but it is also widely attested in songs from different cultural contexts. p. 271. But I
believe that his evidence makes clear that the frequent and sophisticated use of the device by
Pindar (detailed pp. 284-92) stands in contrast to that of other archaic Greek poets.
100
Segal (1986) p. 99. DAlessio himself shies away from admitting writing into his conception
of Pindars temporal deixis: D'Alessio (2004) pp. 279-80.
25
meditation on (and as) the beginning of his poem. In constructing a song, Pindar declares,
the poet must erect a glorious faade at the beginning of his work, standing it up like
golden columns for all to see (1-4):
G8?,04' H)*,-=,4&-#' #I-#1J#K )8*;68L ;4"=%*?
5+*&4' M' N-# ;4O-E& %0948*&
)=P*%#& @8J*%0&*? 3' Q89*? )8$,:)*&
J8R ;0%#& -O"4?90'.

Standing up golden columns under the well-built forecourt of the chamber, let us
fix them as a palace wondrous to behold. At the start of a work it is necessary to
set down the far-shining faade.

The comparison of poetic composition to architectural construction allows Pindar to
expose the double nature of his poems beginning. The mode of construction he describes
at first appears paradoxical: buildings are not begun from the outside, but from unseen
foundations hidden within. However, the shining faade is the first thing seen by a
visitor, the performative beginning of the building, though not its structural foundation.
By this logic, Ford notes, it is not the song as text that will be gazed at and far-
gleaming, but the performance and the fame that it creates.
101
We are invited to see the
poem at the moment of its reception, to admire the shining beginning of oral
performance. But the paradox of the image also points to the poems other beginning, the
beginning of construction which fixes ()=P*%#&) and sets (;0%#&) the physical text into a
solid and immovable form; the firm material of the poems other foundation in the hands
of the encoding poet, hidden from view by the shining spectacle of its dynamic
performance. The unstable image offers a hint of how the dual status of the text as both
written composition and oral performance results in a double vision or a double
language, of a backstage, of something hidden behind or beneath.
102
Pindars double
image offers a new type of sphragis, one which imprints the poem with its own hybrid
nature and thus ensures that its performance is always marked by the scriptory
relationship between the poet and his song.
Pindars imaginary architecture is not, of course, a literal written object. But the
language of material construction and monumental fixity links the proem of Olympian 6

101
Ford (2002) p. 124.
102
Segal (1986) pp. 80-1, speaking of the textual self-consciousness of fifth-century tragedy.
26
to a broader discourse of inscriptional monuments that preserved the memory of a
victors fame.
103
These material correlates to the poets epinician odes provided the melic
poet with a clear model of how a fixed, material text could offer a permanent
commemoration of an athletes accomplishments. As Deborah Steiner has shown, Pindar
engages in an oblique and highly figurative meditation on written textuality which often
takes the form of an appropriation of the attributes of physical permanence that were the
distinctive property of these material agalmata. Although these passages are not explicit
declarations of the written status of Pindars poems, they are, as Steiner insists, no less
revealing [of attitudes towards writing] than direct reports.
104
Pindar inscribes his own
metaphorical agalmata with his poetic text,
105
but unlike the physical objects on which
they are modeled, Pindars written monuments are never fully fixed, never tied to a single
place or moment. His written objects always incorporate the mobility and spatio-temporal
instability of the script.
The metaphoric, often enigmatic character of these scriptory meditations in both
Pindar and Aeschylus arises from the poets still inchoate sense of how poetic
performance and written fixity function in concert. Their images do not mask or obscure
a more lucid, rational understanding and we should not ask them to speak in the analytic
terms of later philosophical discourse.
106
But these flitting figurations, in their paradoxical
and confounding beauty, offer us a glimpse of two exceptional poets grappling with the
exciting and unsettling prospects of a shifting poetic landscape. The character of this
figurative exploration is best exemplified by Pindars most explicit reference to writing.
The passage, which serves as the opening to Olympian 10, is also the first attested usage
of the verb anagignsk with the meaning to read aloud or recite:
SE& T"?%)1*&+54& @&=9&:-0 %*1
U8J#,-8=-*? )4K34, )$;1 >8#&$'
(%<' 90984)-41

Read out to me the [name of the] son of Archestratos, the Olympic victor, which

103
Thomas (2007).
104
Steiner (1994) p. 100. As Haun Saussy has observed, the distinction between writing and the
forerunners of writing assumes a conceptual universe of which achieved writing already forms a
part. Saussy (1996) p. 306.
105
Steiner (1994) pp. 91-9.
106
Steiner (1994).
27
has been written on my heart.

Despite the unambiguous reference to writing (@&=9&:-#, 90984)-41), the lines are
clearly metaphorical, replacing the material object on which writing would normally be
inscribed with the poets own phrn. Pindar internalizes the act of writing, casting his
internal organs as a script which can mediate the distance between composition and
performance.
107
Aeschylus adopts a similar phrasing when, in the course of the kommos
of the Choephoroi, Electra calls on her brother to write her laments in his phrn (-*14V-'
@5*6:& [] (& >8#,W& 98=>*? 450).
108
Both poets set the image of writing in tension
with the idea of an oral performance. For Aeschylus, the emphasis is on Orestes oral
perceptions; he hears (@5*6:&) the words that he must inscribe in his heart, a fact that is
emphasized in the Choruss rejoinder (<98=>*?>
109
31' X-:& 3C ,?&-0-841&# %V;*&
Y,6JL >8#&D& F=,#1 451). For Pindar, the combination of oral performance and written
script is filtered through the lens of scriptory distance, relating the hic et nunc of
performance to an earlier moment of the songs composition. The name has been written
(90984)-41), now it will be read out. The poets apostrophe, which calls on an
unidentified group to vocalize his composition, establishes a strong deictic marker within
the hic et nunc of performance. Yet it also exposes a tension between the poets physical
connection to his poetic work (something that has been written inside his own body) and
his reliance on surrogates to give voice to his words in performance. The vocalization
that Pindar calls for has already been achieved by the performers impersonation of the
command. Pindar fuses his own voice with that of his performers, conflating the spatio-
temporal distance that the passage brings to light. Pindar dramatizes the complex
scriptory relationship between poet and performers, and through this single, merged
enunciation replicates the spatio-temporal instability of the scriptory poem itself.

Overview
My inquiry into this world of Pindar and Aeschylus scriptory poetics is structured in two
parts: the first two chapters work in conjunction to establish the historical and

107
So Steiner (1994) p. 27.
108
Aeschylus employs similar images elsewhere: Sup. 179, 991, Eum. 275.
109
Suppl. Klausen. With or without the conjecture, the Chorus place clear emphasis on Orestes
aural perception.
28
methodological basis for the investigation, while the remaining chapters examine the
thematic and metaphorical language through which the poets explore the various facets
their scriptory world.
In chapter one, A Question of Voice, I establish a foundation for comparing the
work of Pindar and Aeschylus. The formal distinctions that separate Pindars lyric odes
from Aeschylus dramatic compositions are defined according to the voices with which
the poets tell their tales (i.e. narrative or dramatic); what Grard Genette has called
dictional mode. There are stark differences between the two authors: the total absence
of an authorial voice in Aeschylus fully dramatic plays stands in marked contrast to the
almost tyrannical first person that Pindar employs throughout his narrative compositions.
Yet, despite their seeming incompatibility in this respect, I identify two complementary
poetic elements which question and transcend this primary opposition: oratio recta and
apostrophe. These formal features are unique in that they at once bridge and highlight
central differences between the dialogic form of drama and the monologic form of
Pindars lyric compositions (Platos mimetic and diegetic modes). Examination of these
features thus allows the poets divergent voices to be compared along similar lines. More
importantly, Pindar and Aeschylus make use of these two tropes in closely related ways,
exploring questions of the vocal identity and authority which result in complex and often
enigmatic spatio-temporal configurations.
In chapter two, A Voice from the Past, I connect the poets interest in new
temporalities of poetic enunciation to their growing sophistication about the technology
of writing. I show how a complex set of shifts brought the long-developing appreciation
of how writing impacted on Greek song culture to a critical juncture. The distinctive
temporal characteristics of Pindars and Aeschylus approach to direct speech and
apostrophe, outlined in chapter one, are here shown to map directly onto to the key
features of this new conceptualization of poetry. The temporal and vocal explorations
enabled by the manipulation of dictional mode reflect the poets understanding of their
scriptory compositions hybrid nature, paradoxically possessing both the material fixity
and temporal stability of writing and the occasional, ephemeral status of oral
performance. Central to this conception is the figure of Homer, who stands as a model for
29
the fifth-century poets through the well-established tradition of rhapsodic reperformance
a voice from the past who helps them trace the contours of their new poetic world.
Following these theoretically foundational discussions, the remaining three chapters
explore the figurative registers through which Pindar and Aeschylus engage in this
parallel project of poetic reinvention. I identify three central themes tools, snakes, and
ghosts which cluster around the poets charged uses of direct speech and apostrophe
and which help to map the contours of the scriptory matrix. These themes highlight and
help the poets articulate the complicated temporality of poetic speech, drawing the formal
characteristics of oratio recta and apostrophe into the content and plot of their poems.
Each chapter concentrates on one of these themes, pairing central passages by each
author with supporting evidence from other works of Pindar and Aeschylus as well as
their close contemporaries. Thus the key comparison of chapter three, Tools, is
between Pindars Olympian 13 and Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes. Both texts center
on a physical tool, respectively Bellerophons bridle and the shields of the Argive
attackers, which represents the materiality of the poetic script in its instrumental and
temporally dynamic character: a mediating object that allows communication between
otherwise isolated agents. Chapter four, Snakes, focuses on the embodiment of
scriptory song through reperformance. In this chapter I examine how the heroes of the
Choephoroi and Olympian 8 are able to inhabit and give human form to the symbolic
snakes who play a pivotal role in the action of both poems. I suggest that the protean
figure of the snake provides a critical model for understanding the mimetic
transformations of scriptory performance. Chapter five, Ghosts, compares the ghostly
apparitions of Pythian 8 and Persai as representations of the scriptory poets special
brand of immortal speech.
30


PART ONE SCRIPTED VOICES
31
CHAPTER 1 A QUESTION OF VOICE

Before we can begin to examine the nature of scriptory poetics in Pindar and Aeschylus,
we must first establish a foundation for the comparative analysis of their work. There are,
as noted in the introduction, significant differences between the two poets compositional
practices which need to be taken into account in order to properly situate my central
claim, that Pindar and Aeschylus are closely aligned in their awareness of and response to
the new poetic realities that follow from the increasingly central role of writing in the
world of Greek song. It is my contention that the decisive category of difference is not to
be found in external factors such as political conditions, ritual context, or perceived social
value. Rather what most critically distinguishes the work of Pindar from that of
Aeschylus is fundamentally a question of voice, by which I mean the discursive or
dictional mode in which their poems are composed.
Put simply, the voice of Pindars melic odes is primarily diegetic, presenting
monologic narration in the first person of the poet.
1
By contrast, Aeschylus dramatic
compositions are fully mimetic, representing dialogic exchange without any authorial or
narrative frame. The voices of our poets works are thus distinguished both in kind
(narrator vs. actor) and in number (one vs. many). Such a fundamental divergence of
poetic form presents a significant obstacle to comparative analysis, but at the same time, I
hope to demonstrate that it is precisely by attending to this critical dissimilarity that we
can identify the common ground for exploring these poets underlying sympathy of
approach. Dictional mode is an essential feature of a poems internal performative
structure: what Claude Calame has called the complex interplay of discursive constructs
and enunciative masks that each poet deploys in the creation of poetic performance.
2

The vocal or dictional properties of a poem shape how texts become an oral performance.

"
1
When speaking of the poet or author in this sense, I refer to the persona loquens who takes
responsibility for the composition of the poem, not the historical person. For an overview, as well
as a subtle engagement with ancient approaches to this distinction, see Clay (1998). The fraught
question of whether Pindars poems were performed by a chorus or a single voice does not bear
on this distinction as it is primarily a matter of external performance conditions rather than
internal strategies for performance. The implications of the debate with respect to re-performance,
elegantly explored by Morgan (1993), will be examined in chap. 2.
2
Calame (1995) p. 25.
32
The speaking voices that the poet sets within his compositions determine the shape and
character of his poems instantiation as song, thus these characteristics provide an
important indication of how the poet imagines his work will be performed and received.
Dictional mode is therefore the basic category through which a scriptory outlook can be
located.
A model of poetic differentiation based on voice is by no means novel. In fact, it is
one of the earliest coherently articulated structures of poetic categorization, put forth by
none other than Plato himself in book three of the Republic.
3
Platos framework, part of
the first formulation of a theory of mimesis, is elegant in the simplicity of its
comprehensive categories. Following from the claim that all poetry is a kind of narration
(31A9O,1'), Platos Socrates sets out three possible styles of speech (what I refer to as
dictional modes) in which such narrative can be composed: plain narrative (in the voice
of the poet), imitation (in the voice of someone else; Z' -1' [""*' X& 393a7), or a
mixture of the two.
4
Although these distinctions in voice are loosely aligned with specific
genres of poetry the plain narrative style corresponding primarily to dithyramb, the
wholly mimetic mode to tragedy and comedy, and the mixed to epic amongst others
(394b8-c5) the relevant distinction is not one of genre, in contrast to later formulations
of the tripartite structure, but, as Genette correctly discerned, of dictional mode.
5
For
Plato, voice, not genre, was the critical distinguishing characteristic of poetic expression,
and the key feature that demanded examination and theorization.

3
Cf. Athanassaki (1990) pp. 139-40.
4
Rep.3.392d5-6: \8' *]& *IJW ^-*1 _)"` 31O9A,#1 a 317 %1%A,#:' 919&*%0&b a 31'
@%>*-08:& )#84+&*?,1&;
I should note that I employ the terms diegetic and mimetic as representing the same order of
magnitude in terms of categorization, despite the (opposing) hierarchical structures in which Plato
and Aristotle originally situated them. Cf. the critique of Genette by Kirby (1991) pp. 113-9. In
this study I share Genettes limited interest in the categorization of poetry (i.e. verbal art) alone
and therefore the hierarchical structure that allows both Platos and Aristotles theories to explain
plastic as well as verbal arts are of little concern. My terms follow the division of Mieke Bal, who
states that there are two types of speakers [] in a narrative text; one [diegetic mode] does not
play a role in the fabula whereas the other [mimetic] does. Bal (1997) p. 8
5
Genette (1992) pp. 60-72. The distinction of enunciative voices by genre, where the essential
properties of lyric, epic, and tragedy are aligned to their characteristic mode of speech (most
commonly the schema lyric: diegetic, tragedy: mimetic epic: mixed) emerged centuries after
Plato ventured his modal formulation and would have been unrecognizable to the fourth-century
philosopher
33
The details of exactly how Platos limited definition of mimesis, set out in book three
of the Republic, comes to function within the broader structure of his still evolving theory
of mimesis, especially as explored in its wider sense in Republic 10, will not concern us
here.
6
It is sufficient to note, with Halliwell, that the narrow definition of mimesis with
which Plato begins serves as a heuristic device that sets in sharp focus the ideas of
likeness and assimilation that will be explored in the later discussion.
7
More pertinent to
our present purposes is the fact that, in this first formulation, Plato employs distinctions
inspired by poetic practice distinctions that were most likely already familiar to his
audience in order to draw attention to the essential characteristics of the mimetic mode
that he is beginning to explore. The subsequent broad appeal of Platos taxonomy is
witnessed by the fact that it is followed not only by Aristotle,
8
but by the scholarly
tradition in Alexandria and Rome.
9
At the same time, however, evidence from even
earlier poetic works, such as the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, suggests that Plato is himself
drawing upon an already established tradition of analyzing the categories of poetic
speech.
10
Plato, it would seem, has appropriated the term mimesis towards his new,
philosophical ends. Plato seeks to clarify his complex theoretical position by introducing
it in terms that were already familiar as technical categories of poetic speech types.
11
The
aims and interests of Platos theory were markedly different from these earlier

6
Good comprehensive treatments are given by Halliwell (2002) chap. 2, Ferrari (1989). See also
Annas (1981), Griswold (1981), Nehamas (1982), Annas (1982), Murray (1993), Gould (1993),
Belfiore (2006).
7
Halliwell (2002) p. 75.
8
On the important divergence of Aristotle from Plato with respect to the categorization of
diegetic and mimetic compositions, see Kirby (1991), pp. 116-7. On Aristotles own internal
inconsistencies in his treatment of the tripartite schema, Halliwell (2002) pp. 167-8 with
bibliography.
9
Nnlist (2009) pp. 94-102, Halliwell (2002) p. 324. On Hellenistic theories of narration more
generally, Meijering (1987), pp. 72-8, 99-132. On the interest of Hellenistic poets in the tripartite
modal division, see Fantuzzi (1988) pp. 47-85.
10
This assessment is further supported by usages in Aristophanes Thesmophoriazousai (156,
850). See Stohn (1993). The use of words from the mim- root in Pindar and Aeschylus, who
intend to demonstrate a quasi-technical sense of imitation, is discussed by Else (1958) pp. 77-9.
11
As Ford describes the effect, the miming aspect of Platonic mimesis is an archaism
resurrected with the support of the most scientific outlook of his day. Ford (2002) p. 217 also pp.
94-5.
34
expressions,
12
but they share the fundamental identification of voice as the essential
property of poetic typology.
More than two centuries before Plato began to explore the idea of mimesis in his
Republic, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo makes use of the term %1%#K,;41 to denote the
poetic technique of vocal impersonation. Describing the unparalleled beauty of the Delian
maidens singing, the poet lauds their ability to imitate the voices of others (162-4):
)=&-:& 3' @&;8c):& >:&7' 54W 58#%F4"14,-d&
%1%#K,;' e,4,1& >4+O 30 5#& 4I-E' f54,-*'
>;099#,;' *g-: ,>1& 54"R ,?&=8O8#& @*13A.

And they know how to imitate the voices and sounds of all men. Each man would
say that he himself was speaking, so beautifully joined is their song.

The activity represents a technical accomplishment in the realm of poetic composition or
performance. The imitation is a result of the Delian maidens poetic skill and knowledge,
and results in the production of a beautiful song with the power to enchant its audience.
The language of the passage seems to demonstrate a specialized terminology that is in
keeping with the poems overall interest in the details of poetic production and
performance.
13

The precise nature of the praise for the Delian maidens is a matter of debate,
14
but I
believe that the lines are most fruitfully read as a reflection of interest in dictional mode.
The passage describes the virtuosic interweaving of many different voices and sounds
into a single poetic composition and performance. The strong focus on the multiplicity of
the objects of imitation is reflected in the emphatic position of pantn at the beginning of
the first hexameter. It is the range of voices that the women can impersonate that renders
their performance so exceptional. Read in this manner, the description is not unlike
Platos own, much later description of the versatile imitator
15
who can readily perform
the voices of any number of men and whose speech will be wholly through imitation of

12
As Ferrari notes, the technical language is not novel. What is distinctively Platonic is rather
the focus on the ethical aspect of such technicalities. Ferrari (1989) pp. 114-5. Halliwell (2002)
p. 51 esp. n. 35.
13
On which, see Lonsdale (1994), Peponi (2009) esp. pp. 62-8.
14
It has often been thought that the passage hinges on the singers ability to mimic dialectic
characteristics; Ford (2002) p. 94, Halliwell (2002) p. 18 with bibliography at n. 43.
15
The term is that of Belfiore (2006) p. 89.
35
voices and gestures, or include some small bits of narrative (397a3-b2).
16
Both texts
single out the incorporation of multiple voices and sounds into a single song as a broadly
recognized feature of skillful poetry. But where Plato argues that the imitators skill is
ethically problematic, the author of the Hymn deems prowess in this sphere to be worthy
of praise and singles it out as the most important distinguishing characteristic of the
Delian maidens special song.
17

It is, however, noteworthy that although the Hymn exalts the skillful blending of
dictional modes, the maidens vocal imitation is said to produce a confusion about the
identity of the speaker. The Hymn describes the girls mimetic utterances as being
misleadingly close to those whose voices they resemble, at times resulting in
misunderstanding and even misattribution. Each imitation is so exact as to be
indistinguishable from the original even by the original himself: >4+O 30 5#& 4I-E'
f54,-*' / >;099#,;'. The concise language of the poem once again resists
interpretation, but I take the expression to be an expansion of the earlier praise of the
multiplicity of the voices imitated by the maidens, now concentrating on the fidelity of
the likenesses. The focus on the maidens range is emphasized by the specification
hekastos, implying that many of those hearing the performance would have been treated
to a personalized imitation. Again, the multiplicity of imitation is brought into relief. But
now it is expressed in terms of mistaken identity and a correspondingly unsettled sense of
individual agency. The puzzling result is elegantly expressed in the contrast between
actual and potential speech: a man might say that the maidens speech was his own, but
such a voice is only theoretical, preempted even within the syntax of the poem by the
mimetic performance of the singers. The skillful manipulation of dictional modes may be
a feature of poetic excellence, but such songs can also erode the boundaries of identity.
As an imitator, a singer must perform in the voice of another and thus split his own

16
Platos description mentions non-human sounds as well as voices, perhaps echoing the
ambiguous sense of 58#%F4"14,-d& in the Hymn, which may refer to the sounds made by
musical instruments similar to castanets, see Peponi (2009) pp. 49-51. The expansion of mimetic
impersonation to include non-human sounds adds a level of complexity to thinking about poetic
voice but does not alter its fundamental properties.
17
The incorporation of mimetic speech is also a feature of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo itself, one
of the characteristics that distinguishes the longer, more complex hymns from their shorter
counterparts. On the use of direct speech in the major Homeric hymns, see Beck (2001) pp. 55-7.
36
identity as well as that of the object he imitates. It is precisely this type of confusion that
lies at the heart of Platos objections to mimetic compositions.
18
But, as the Hymn
demonstrates, the potential for vocal confusion was recognized long before Plato
subjected the realm of song to his rigorous ethical standards. In both texts, the
fluctuating, uncertain status of the speaking subject is as an essential characteristic of
mimetic diction. Whether viewed positively or with suspicion, at the heart of these early
examinations of dictional mode was a vocal ambiguity inherently tied to the imitative,
and thus twofold, nature of mimetic diction.
19

In addition to illustrating how Platos tripartite taxonomy of dictional mode extended
many points of interest that had been alive in the poetic sphere for over a century, the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo offers a glimpse of the complex ways in which poets
approached these questions from within their own compositions. As practicing poets like
the author of the Hymn, Pindar and Aeschylus explored the question of poetic typology
through poetic rather than analytical means. But for our two poets, this exploration was
not a descriptive activity that explicitly addressed itself to questions of poetic voice.
Rather, their sustained meditations on the properties and powers of dictional modes were
accomplished through the active manipulation of the voices of their own poems. As I
stated above, the essential distinction between Pindar and Aeschylus is found in this
feature of their work, the former composing in the diegetic mode, the latter in the
mimetic. But, when examined in the practical reality of their poetic compositions, this
modal distinction reveals itself to be a boundary that is by no means fixed or
insurmountable. For it is precisely in their desire to blur the distinctions and unsettle the
fixed properties of poetic voice that we find a poetic sympathy that joins the two poets in
dialogue.
There are two key poetic features, or tropes, by which Pindar and Aeschylus
temporarily disrupt the primary dictional mode of their compositions: oratio recta and

18
For Plato, the kind of polyphony described in the Hymn must, by dint of its very multiplicity,
be injurious to a mans singular virtue (397d1-398b4). Republic 3 focuses on the effect that this
assimilation has on the poet or performer, while the impact on the audience is not discussed until
book ten. Halliwell (2002) pp. 76-80.
19
As Nagy notes, the maidens performance should also be understood as a model for subsequent
reperformances, a further complication of vocal registers which will be explored in the next
chapter. Nagy (1990) p. 376.
37
apostrophe. By transgressing the established order of poetic voice, these tropes allow the
poets to trace and reconfigure the limits of the modal categorization of their compositions
(respectively diegetic and mimetic). These tropes are not directly linked, but they are
related in complex ways through their individual bearing on questions of dictional mode.
In this chapter I will seek to outline how these tropes are deployed by our poets so as to
reflect a more pervasive interest in questions of poetic voice and performance. These
insights will serve as the foundation for our investigations of shape of Pindar and
Aeschylus scriptory poetics in the rest of the study. After clarifying the basic definitions
and properties of these tropes, I will address each in turn, establishing the frequency of
their occurrence in Pindar and Aeschylus and examining the specific characteristics that
are brought to bear on questions of poetic voice. These more detailed assessments will be
illustrated by an exemplary poem from the corpus of each author: Pindars Olympian 6
and Aeschylus Agamemnon (with special reference to the parodos). These poems are
selected because their multiple instances of both oratio recta and apostrophe provide us
with ample material through which to illustrate the range and complexity with which our
poets make use of these tropes.

Definitions
Our first trope, oratio recta, or direct speech, is mimetic speech embedded within the
speech of another figure; it is the impersonation, or imitation, of the first-person speech
of someone other than the framing speaker.
20
It is distinguished from its close relation,
indirect speech (oratio obliqua) by the mimetic diction of the embedded quotation: He
said Im a grasshopper is an example of direct speech, while He said he was a
grasshopper is indirect. Apostrophe is defined as the sudden introduction of a (new)
second-person address. A second-person address is most often considered apostrophe
when the addressee is absent, but the trope is more properly understood as an address
without a corresponding response.
21
Particularly in the context of dramatic poetry, where

20
Similar definitions are offered by Bers (1997) pp. 5-9, and Beck (2005). The integrity of the
category, at least within Homeric epic, is called into question by Bakker (2009). See n. 39 below.
21
This definition follows the ancient model, cf. Quint. 4.1.63-70, 9.3.24; Hutchinson (2010) pp.
96-7 with bibliography. The modern definition of apostrophe as an address to an absent figure
stems from an interest in the idea of a lyric self, a Romantic concept which is best excluded
38
multiple characters inhabit the performative hic et nunc, the primary criterion for
identifying apostrophe does not rest on the question of physical presence but the fact that
an appeal to a second figure goes unrequited.
Both apostrophe and oratio recta are tropes of fictional communication: oratio recta
is the impersonation or imitation of the first-person speech of someone other than the
actual speaker; apostrophe is the second-person address or invocation of an addressee
who is not actually present insofar as he or she does not meet the primary speakers
address. Hence they carry comparable mimetic (or imitative) force, whether employed by
a dramatic character on the stage or the persona loquens of a lyric poem. While of course
these tropes realize their dictional force in the context of specific works, these two tropes
are distinguished by the fact that they possess their own vocal identity. Whether they
appear within a poem that is itself primarily mimetic, diegetic, or mixed in dictional
mode, oratio recta and apostrophe maintain certain vocal properties that are internal to
the tropes themselves. Yet, precisely because they are already internally coded to exhibit
certain qualities of mimetic and diegetic speech, these tropes are specially positioned to
create moments of pointed reflection on the broader dictional character of the text in
which they are deployed.
In both mimetic and diegetic texts, oratio recta introduces a momentary instance of
the mixed mode. In principally diegetic poetry, the introduction of mimetic diction
through embedded first-person speech necessarily results in a momentary transfer into the
mixed genre. In purely mimetic compositions the effect is somewhat more complex. The
doubly mimetic diction of speech in speech redoubles the mimetic mode of expression.
But at the same time (and the complexities of this point will be central to our
investigations in this chapter) the hierarchical relationship of the mimetic voices
temporarily establishes a mixed mode and thus casts the framing mimetic speaker as a
kind of diegetic narrator.
The effect of apostrophe on mimetic and diegetic texts is less clearly discerned than
that of oratio recta, but its transformative power is if anything even greater. Through the
introduction of a real or imagined interlocutor, apostrophe triggers a binary exchange

from treatments of archaic Greek poetic practice, see Culler (2002) esp. chap. 7, also Prynne
(1988).
39
between diegetic and mimetic diction, skipping over the mixed mode. The mode of
apostrophic diction is determined not by the speaker alone, but by the relationship
between speaker and addressee. By invoking an interlocutor, even one who necessarily
remains silent, the primary speaker sets himself within a new performative framework,
calling into vivid reality the uncertainties at the heart of early fifth-century concerns
about poetic voice.
Through their special ability to effect a poems dictional character, both apostrophe
and oratio recta can, as they do in the hands of Pindar and Aeschylus, produce
flashpoints that expose larger concerns about the nature of poetic voice. Both tropes
temporarily recalibrate a poems dictional mode by introducing a problematic new voice:
either the embedded speaker of oratio recta or the silent interlocutor of apostrophe. This
fictional or imagined second voice enters into a dialogue of sorts with the main speaker,
calling into question the speakers own dictional status. At the same time, these tropes
recalibrate a songs performative landscape. The vocal characteristics that are inherent to
apostrophe and oratio recta also possess a spatio-temporal aspect insofar as the new
voices which they introduce are imbued with the immediacy of unmediated, hic et nunc
presence. Through their direct vocal contact with a primary speaker, these secondary
figures present an alternate, often competing claim to presence within the world of a
song. The performative reality claimed by a poems primary poetic diction is thus
inflected by the spatio-temporal claims of these secondary voices. The poetic world
represented by a poems primary dictional mode, whether mimetic or diegetic, can be
called into question and reconceived in light of the often jarring polyphony that the tropes
of apostrophe and oratio recta are able to introduce. These tropes do not simply allow our
poets to express their thoughts about the formal structure of their compositions; they
provide a platform for exploring how the manipulation of vocal characteristics can
reconfigure the perceived realities of poetic performance.
Before beginning our investigation of these tropes, it is useful to note that although
apostrophe and oratio recta share a number of important characteristics with respect to
dictional mode, they are always employed in a balanced manner. Homer, for example,
employs direct speech throughout his epic poetry, whereas apostrophe is a marked figure,
occurring only rarely and with compelling effect on the narrative. The inverse is true of
40
Pindar and Aeschylus, who make regular use of apostrophe but are far more sparing with
direct speech. This quantitative imbalance is, as in Homer, inversely proportional to the
qualitative force of the tropes. Because it occurs less frequently, oratio recta becomes the
marked form in our poets, and its use always demonstrates the strong dictional character
described above. Apostrophe, by contrast, must be separately activated to realize its full
effect. Pindar and Aeschylus make use of various strategies to produce this function in
apostrophe. In order to discern what these strategies are, and understand how and when
apostrophe becomes dictionally marked, we will be guided by the always activated trope,
oratio recta. We will therefore begin our investigation by charting the more readily
identified contours of direct speech in section one (Lending Voice). We will then be
able to adopt these insights as a frame for the subsequent analysis of the more oblique
dynamics of apostrophe in section two (The Stage is Set).

1. LENDING VOICE
Oratio recta is not a common feature of the poetry of Pindar or Aeschylus, but it occurs
often enough to attribute its use to a deliberate compositional decision by the poet and to
allow for the perception of consistent features and themes in its occurrences. Twelve of
Pindars forty-five surviving epinician odes (just over one quarter) contain one or more
instances of direct speech.
22
Pindars work in other genres only survives in a highly
fragmentary state and statistical assessments cannot be ventured with great confidence.
23

But the limited evidence that we do have suggests that direct speech was employed in a
comparable manner in Pindars non-epinician poems.
24
Each of our six surviving
Aeschylean tragedies makes use of oratio recta on at least one occasion.
25
Surviving

22
O. 1.75-85; 4.23-27; 6.16-17, 62-3; 8.42-46; 13.67-9; P. 3.40-42; 4.13-57, 87-92, 97-100, 102-
119, 138-155, 156-167, 229-231; 8.44-55; 9.30-36, 39-65; N. 10.76-79, 80-88; I. 6.43-49, 52-54;
8.35
a
-45. This list contains only minor variations from those found in Pfeijffer (1999c) p. 531,
Hornblower (2004) pp. 325-6, Fearn (forthcoming).
23
The paucity of the generic corpora makes broad claims impossible and the highly fragmentary
nature of the majority of the individual poems means that instances of direct speech (especially
brief ones) might have been present in lines that have now been lost.
24
Hymn fr. 43 SM, Pae. 2.73-5, Pae. 4.39-?, Pae. 7b.?-42, Pae. 8a.14-?. Less certain are fr. 157,
said to be the direct speech of Silenus, and fr. 168b, which the scholia attribute to Heracles.
25
Pers. 402-5, Sep. 580-9, Sup. 402, 584-7, Ag. 126-55, 206-17, 410-26, 577-9, 590-2, Ch. 569-
70, 575, 680-7, 829, Eum. 511-2, 757-60. I follow communis opinio in excluding the Prometheus
Bound, and its single instance of oratio recta (647-54). In addition, there are three instances in
41
fragments from other Aeschylean tragedies and satyr plays reveal three further passages
of embedded speech,
26
but unfortunately it is not possible to extrapolate a more general
sense of frequency in view of the vast number of lost works. Within our extant examples,
Aeschylus uses direct speech freely in both lyric and stichic passages of his plays and,
although the dynamics are slightly altered by the distinctions of specific dramatic
contexts, these instances do not display marked differences in the aspects we will focus
on.
This section will examine three central correspondences in the use of oratio recta by
our poets: tension between framing and embedded speaker, the consistently asymmetrical
structuring of communication within embedded episodes, and the preponderance of
prophetic and forward-looking themes within embedded speeches. As I will demonstrate,
in each of these key aspects Pindar and Aeschylus distinguish themselves from the
established usage of the trope. This marked deviation from normal practice draws
attention to the use of oratio recta and signals the poets critical disposition with regards
to the trope. Furthermore, each of the ways in which Pindar and Aeschylus change the
poetic function of direct speech bears directly upon fundamental questions of poetic
voice. Both poets shift the trope so that it reflects and intensifies the spatio-temporal
properties of dictional mode. As we will see, the unusual form of Pindaric and
Aeschylean oratio recta represents the concerns of scriptory poetics at its most basic
structural level. These points of disruption which momentarily recast established
dictional mode provide a first glimpse of the larger and far more complex interplay of
voice that constitutes Pindars and Aeschylus radical experiments in scriptory poetics.

Framer and Framed
The formal structure of oratio recta establishes a hierarchy between the framing speaker,
who imparts his voice, and the embedded speaker whom the framer momentarily
impersonates. An understanding of how Pindar and Aeschylus exploit the complexities of

which objects are given voice in oratio recta: Sep. 434, 647-8 and Ag. 1334. A treatment of all
possible instances is provided by Bers (1997) pp. 25-43. I reject a number of passages that Bers
adduces as direct speech, Ag. 176-8, and 448-9, Ch. 313-4, on the grounds that gnomic or
generalized utterances do not represent true impersonations of an embedded speakers words.
26
fr.139.4-5Radt (Myrmidons), fr.159.4Radt (Niobe), fr.78.24Radt (Theoroi).
42
this embedded relationship will be the first and most essential component of our analysis
of the trope. Our poets not only deploy the trope so as to dramatically expose the
contours of this formal structure, but dynamically activate the interface of divergent
dictional mode to call the spatio-temporal status of both voices into question. This
practice represents the foundational structure on which all subsequent views of
performative polyphony are based, and is the crucial characteristic of Pindar and
Aeschylus unique approach to the trope of oratio recta.
In archaic Greek poetry, the parameters of vocal hierarchy in oratio recta are
regularly established through the use of linguistic markers (so-called inquit formulae)
to introduce and conclude the oratio recta, and to signal the shift in voice from narrator
to embedded speaker. Following the established tradition of hexameter formulae, the
presence of these markers was both expected and highly formalized,
27
and their absence,
for example famously at Iliad 1.17, was cause for comment.
28
The formal rigidity of the
framing language in poetry of the mixed enunciative mode, such as that of Homeric epic
or Stesichorean lyric, is reflective of the separation of the narrative voice of the poet from
the figures of the mythical past whose exploits he is recounting. Archaic Greek poetry in
the mixed mode occasionally transgressed the firm boundary between the poet and his
subject, such as when Homer apostrophizes his characters in diegetic narration,
29
or when
Stesichorus offers his apology to Helen in the second person in his famous palinode.
30

But these moments of anachronistic proximity are the exception, notable for drawing
attention to and even breaching the unspoken border between the poet and the subjects of

27
On framing language for oratio recta in Homer see, Martin (1989), Griffin (1986), Beck (2005)
esp. pp. 25-45. Direct speech in Homer is discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
28
Fantuzzi (1988) pp. 47-59, cf. Nnlist (2009) pp. 102-6.
29
Iliad: Menelaus: 4.127, 146; 7.104; 13.603; 17.679, 702; 23.600, Patroclus: 16.20, 584, 692-3,
744, 754, 787, 812, 843, Melanippos: 15.582, Achilles: 20.2. Odyssey: Eumaios: 14.55, 165, 360,
442, 507; 15.325; 16.60, 135, 464; 17.272, 311, 380, 512, 579; 22.194.
30
Alexander Beecroft has recently argued that the palinode sets out a clear poetic preference for
the epichoric over the panhellenic. If he is correct, the proximity of Stesichorus and his subject
through the second-person address would be a further element of this localizing stance. Beecroft
(2006). That the account of Stesichorus blinding by Helen on account of his false tale
represented a mimetic element of lyric performance is argued by Sider (1989). For the mimetic
performance of the palinode, see Beecroft (2010) pp. 152-70.
43
his tale.
31
The same is not true, however, of Pindar or Aeschylus, who both regularly
expose, explore, and erase the spatio-temporal distance that separates the voices of framer
and framed.
Starting with Pindaric practice, we find a structure that at first appears to place
considerable distance between framing and embedded speakers. Like Homer and
Stesichorus, Pindar most often frames embedded speeches with the semi-standardized
inquit formulae that distinguish and separate the poet from the mimetic speaker whom he
impersonates.
32
Furthermore, all instances of direct speech in Pindars surviving work,
whether in epinician or other genres, are characterized by their location within a mythical
narrative of events long past, a fact that increases the formal separation of voices through
the additional degree of contextual distance.
But in Pindars deft hands, the emphatic separation of voices in fact results in
precisely the opposite. Such a temporal disjunction between framing narrator and
embedded speaker is to be expected in Homer or Stesichorus, who are, to use Andrew
Fords term, poets of the past, looking back from their narrative posts to the heroic
exploits of a bygone age.
33
For Pindar, whose poems balance mythical narrative with
present (and future) tense description
34
and regularly highlight the speakers present
circumstances through the use of indexical language,
35
the limitation of oratio recta to the
sphere of the mythical past is an overt choice designed to place special focus on the

31
The bold strokes of this claim are warranted when confronting the difference in narrative
posturing between poetry that is primarily mixed in enunciative mode and that which is primarily
diegetic or mimetic. The relationship between Homeric narrator and his embedded characters is
far from simple, a fact that is well reflected, for instance, in Bakkers claim that the Odyssey in
particular pushes the lack of a hierarchical relation between a primary narrator who quotes and
characters or secondary narrators who are quoted to the point of outright competition. Bakker
(2009) p. 129. Nevertheless, I think Bakker underestimates the power of inquit formulae in
establishing a clear hierarchy of voice even within oral performance. Thus I cannot wholly agree
with his claim that what happens [in Homeric oratio recta] is not a withdrawal of the fictional
narrator or an act of quotation, but the performer shifting from one role into another, from
narrator to character pp. 126-7. This is, of course, what literally happens in single person
performance of mixed mode texts, but it is not an accurate description of the performances
effect.
32
The exceptions are numerous and will be treated individually as they arise. See also my
discussion of Pindar and Aeschylus reformulation of Homeric inquit formulae in chap. 2.
33
Ford (1992).
34
Mackie (2003) pp. 45-7.
35
The use of strong deictic language in Pindar is wonderfully explored in the contributions to
Felson (2004).
44
relationship of the two voices within the poem. Since the mimetic diction of oratio recta
brings the words of the embedded speaker into the hic et nunc regardless of the
chronology of the narrative, allowing mythical characters to speak in the first person of
oratio recta is a way to bring the past into the present. But because Pindars relatively
infrequent use of the trope is set within the context of an emphatically asserted spatio-
temporal frame of the poets own performative hic et nunc, the dictional hierarchy is not
so clear cut as it is in Homer. The introduction of a new first-person voice, albeit one
framed by and subordinate to the poet, transforms the parameters of Pindars diegetic
poems. The embedded voice is inevitably set in contrast to the strong voice of the first-
person narrator of the poems; and the status of the narrators performative present is now
gauged against a past speech rendered present through that same narrators skill. The
poets diegetic present must find space for a mimetic voice from the past, and the
conflation of the two spatio-temporal realities recalibrates the properties of both voices.
36

We can see the dynamic clearly at work in the first direct speech in Olympian 6. The
brief embedded speech explicitly links the voices of past and present, as Pindar adduces
Adrastus expression of admiration and longing for his dead comrade Amphiaraos as a
model for his own poetic task (12-8):
h9O,+4, -W& 3 4i&*' j-*K%*', k& (&3+54'
@)E 9"c,,4' l384,-*' %=&-1& mn5"#+34& )*- (' U%>1=8O*&
>;09P4-, ()#W 54-7 94K 4I-$& -0 &1& 54W >413+%4' o))*?' Q%48p#&.
j)-7 3 Q)#1-4 )?8<& &#58*K' -#"#,;0&-:& S4"4q*&+34' 15
#i)#& (& rAF41,1 -*1*V-$& -1 Q)*' s*;0: ,-84-1<' />;4"%E& (%<'
@%>$-#8*& %=&-1& - @94;E& 54W 3*?8W %=8&4,;41. -E 54+
@&38W 5c%*? 3#,)$-t )=8#,-1 u?845*,+L.

Hagesias, yours is that ready praise which Adrastus once spoke with just tongue
to the seer, son of Oikles, Amphiaraos, when the earth had swallowed him and his
glorious horses. When the seven pyres of dead had been consumed, the son of
Talaus made such a speech in Thebes I desire the eye of my army, both noble
seer and spearman. So likewise this [speech] befits this Syracusan man, ruler of
the komos.

From the start the voice of the embedded speaker is presented in direct relation to that of
the framing narrator and his words are explicitly linked to Pindars poetic aims. The easy

36
Bakker (2009) pp. 125-6, Bakker (1997).
45
movement across broad swathes of time is not unusual for Pindar, who often uses the
briefest mythologically significant mention a place or a name to shift his gaze from
the hic et nunc of his performative world to the past.
37
But here it is noteworthy that it is
speech itself that motivates the short excursus into the past. In fact, the narration as such
is little more than an elaborate inquit frame through which the poet emphasizes the verbal
connection between the worlds. The relative pronoun introducing the myth sets Adrastus
speech as the pivot between the two times, directly aligning Adrastus voice with
Pindars. Likewise, the abrupt return to the present following the quoted speech again
pivots on the identical nature of Adrastus speech and that of the poet; the present and
past, Hutchinson comments, are being strikingly juxtaposed and related.
38
The ready
words of the past can serve Pindar in the context of epinician praise as well as they did
the mourning hero, and the poet adopts them verbatim; or rather, the poet yields his
speaking voice to his embedded proxy, allowing the first-person utterance of his mythical
speaker to stand in place of his own speech. Fusing his own voice with one from the past,
Pindar momentarily inhabits the same present tense as his embedded speaker. The
enunciation is neither wholly past nor present but split between two voices that
participate in the same enunciation. The temporary shift in dictional mode effaces the
boundary between the worlds.
Pindar does not usually draw such an unambiguous equivalence between himself and
his embedded speakers.
39
More often connections across the shift in dictional mode are
established through subtle resonances and parallels between the two voices. The poet
engages in a kind of shadow-play of voice on voice, bringing himself into an unspoken
conversation with the voices of his mimetic impersonation. But the absence of direct
equivalence between the voices does not preclude the type of strong comparison that is so
overtly drawn in Olympian 6. The relationship between framer and framed is developed
through what Andrew Miller has dubbed the associative mode by which an
agglomeration of thoughts, connected thematically or through parataxis, produce

37
See e.g. Bonifazi (2004), Nnlist (2007).
38
Hutchinson (2001) p. 384, so too, Goldhill (1991) p. 149.
39
There are only two other points at which a comparable isomorphism of speech is explicitly
claimed by the framing narration: O.4.17-25, P.8.55-60.
46
arguments that can be perceived though not articulated.
40
Whether explicitly signposted
or not, the vocal juxtapositions of Pindars use of direct speech enable the poet to bridge
the spatio-temporal divide between present and past, incorporating distant voices into his
song and thus destabilizing the implicit structure of his own poetic diction.
Aeschylus achieves a similarly destabilizing effect through the use of oratio recta,
but he achieves this outcome by different means. In contrast to the absolute chronological
hierarchy that we found in Pindar, the embedded speakers of Aeschylean oratio recta are
never voices from the mythical past. When Aeschylus allows one of his characters to
impersonate the speech of another figure, the speaker in oratio recta is always a member
of the same world as the framing speaker. The utterance being quoted may have taken
place in the primary speakers past, or even in an imagined future, but there is never so
great a division between the two that they could not potentially face each other on the
stage (though not necessarily within the plot of a given play). But, if we consider the
distinctions in our two poets primary dictional mode, we can see that Aeschylus
rejection of temporally distanced oratio recta permits the dramatic poet to achieve a
spatio-temporal disruption analogous to what we find in Pindar. Where Pindars
totalitarian first person is made uncomfortably to share his hic et nunc with a voice from
afar, the stable hic et nunc of Aeschylus mimetic figures is unsettled through the
internalization of a secondary voice that is normally external.
Since there is no contextually hierarchical relationship between framer and framed
either speaker could be imagined to achieve hic et nunc presence within the drama
Aeschyluss use of oratio recta is concentrated almost entirely on questions of formal
dictional hierarchy. This is particularly important for the dramatic poet, who is primarily
concerned with the power of oratio recta to momentarily invest a mimetic speaker with
the properties of a diegetic narrator. The mimetic nature of embedded speech effects a
doubling or splitting of the hic et nunc of the dramatic scene, creating an additional
degree of polyphony that is uncomfortably contained in the voice of a single mimetic
speaker. At the same time, the distancing apparatus of the inquit formulae, which are
employed by Aeschylus in a manner much like that of Pindar, introduces a formal
separation of voices that emphasizes the distance between the framing speaker, who is

40
Miller (1993).
47
present within the performative hic et nunc, and the disembodied voice of his embedded
imitation. The relationship between Aeschylus framing and embedded speakers
manifests important correspondences with Pindaric usage in the blurring of spatio-
temporal boundaries. In order to see how the trope is able to effect a similar disruption of
poetic diction within Aeschylus dramatic texts, we may turn to the first instance of direct
speech in the Agamemnon, found within the lengthy parodos with which the Chorus
introduce the action of the play.
The speech that first concerns us is that of the seer, Calchas, whose prophecy to the
Atreidai is the central element in the first narrative section of the ode, in which the
Chorus relate the events that, ten years previous, occasioned the sacrifice of Iphigenia at
Aulis and enabled the Greeks to sail to Troy.
41
I quote the passage at length, so that we
may appreciate the interaction between Calchas and the Chorus (123-59):
5#3&E' 3C ,-84-$%4&-1' n3v& 36* "A%4,1 31,,*d'
U-8#w34' %4J+%*?' (3=O "49*34+-4'
)*%)*d' @8J<', *g-: 3' #i)# -#8xy:& 125
J8$&L %C& @98#K s81=%*? )$"1& z3# 50"#?;*',
)=&-4 3C )689:&
5-A&O )8$,;# -7 3O%1*)"O;{
|*K84 "4)=P#1 )8E' -E F+41*&
*i*& %A -1' [94 ;#$;#& 5&#>=,b )8*-?)C& ,-$%1*& %094 S8*+4'
,-84-:;0&. *e5-L 978 ()+>;*&*' l8-#%1' _9&7 135
)-4&*K,1& 5?,W )4-8E'
4I-$-*5*& )8E "$J*? %*9#87& )-=54 ;?*%0&*1,1&
,-?9#K 3C 3#K)&*& 4n#-D&.
4o"1&*& 4o"1&*& #n)0, -E 3' #] &15=-:.

-$,*& )#8 #}>8:& _ 54"7 140
38$,*1' @0)-*1' %4"#8D& "#$&-:&
)=&-:& -' @98*&$%:& >1"*%=,-*1'
;O8D& /F815="*1,1 -#8)&=,
-*6-:& 4n-#K P6%F*"4 58<&41,
3#P17 %C& 54-=%*%>4 3C >=,%4-4 145
nA1*& 3C 54"0: s41<&4,
%A -1&4' @&-1)&$*?' B4&4*K' J8*&+4' (J#&`34' @)"*+4'
-#6Pb, ,)#?3*%0&4 ;?,+4& j-084& [&*%$& -1&' [341-*&,
&#150:& -05-*&4 ,6%>?-*&, *I 3#1,A&*84. %+%&#1 978 >*F#87 )4"+&*8-*'
*n5*&$%*' 3*"+4 %&=%:& |{&1' -#5&$)*1&*'. 155

41
The broad thematic and narrative importance of the parodos is given excellent treatment in the
now standard work by Lebeck (1971) esp. chap. 1.
48
-*1=3# !="J4' Pd& %#9="*1' @94;*K' @)05"49P#&
%$8,1%' @)' /8&+;:& ~3+:& *e5*1' F4,1"#+*1'
-*K' 3' ~%$>:&*&
4o"1&*& 4o"1&*& #n)0, -E 3' #] &15=-:.

The august seer of the army saw the two natures of the two Atreidai recognizing
the conducting chiefs in the warlike hare-feasters. And thus speaking he
interpreted the portent. In time this path captures the city of Priam and Fate will
wipe out the peoples entire store of beasts from before the city. May no god-sent
pollution cast a shadow over the bit sent forth to reign in great Troy, for chaste
Artemis feels pity for the wretched hare begrudging the winged dogs of her father
who devoured it and its young before their birth; she loathes the feast of the
eagles. Cry woe, woe, but let the good prevail.

For the beautiful goddess is thus well disposed towards the dewy seed of fearsome
lions and to the bosom-loving young of all wild creatures she is a joyous delight.
She demands a compensation be made for these. The portent is favorable but also
inauspicious. I call upon Apollo Paian, that she does not send adverse winds
against the Danaans to hold us immobile in port, urging another sacrifice, a
lawless one that makes no feast, a kindred crafter of strife that fears no man. For
an unrelenting housekeeper, frightening and deceitful, remains, Wrath that
remembers, child-avenging. These were the fates from the traveling birds that
Calchas shrieked out, together with great goods, to the royal house. And in the
same voice cry woe, woe, but let the good prevail.

As is common in both Pindar and Aeschylus, a connection between the framing voice of
the Chorus and the embedded speaker is established through a series of subtle alignments
and verbal parallels. The Choruss description of Calchas authority (5#3&$') closely
echoes their earlier confident self-identification as authorized to narrate the events that
took place at Aulis (5681$' #n%1 104).
42
The subtle parallels are developed throughout the
speech,
43
but for our present purposes we may take note of two important points of

42
While not an exact synonym for 5681*' with its legalistic resonance, the term 5#3&$' denotes
a comparable combination of elevated status and trustworthiness, as when Pindar speaks of the
)4-8cq41 5#3&4W )*"+:& 5?F#8&=,1#' (P.10.72). The word derives from the verb 5A3*%41 (to
have concern for) and is relatively common in epic and lyric poetry. The connection extends to
the content of the passage, which establishes the provenance of Calchas speech (namely his
understanding through visual perception (n3v& (3=O)), much as the Chorus earlier claimed
their own narrative mandate on the basis of their divine inspiration.
43
On the relationship between the Chorus and Calchas, see Bers (1997) pp. 30-1, who notes how
the Choruss refusal to relate the gruesome conclusion to the episodes stands in marked contrast
to the granting of substantial space and directness to Calchas oratio recta. By contrast,
Degener describes the Chorus as wholly mistrustful of Calchas, going so far as to mock him.
Degener (2001) pp. 65-7. More subtle is the position of Gantz, who claims that the Chorus
49
contact which help to illuminate the spatio-temporal play resulting from the juxtaposition
of voices.
The first echo establishes the oddly inverted relationship of the Chorus and their
embedded speaker. The first words of Calchas speech establish the seers temporal
perspective at Aulis, looking forward to the expedition and ultimate victory over Troy.
His language mirrors the chronological concern expressed by the Chorus at the start of
the anapaestic opening section: !"#$%&' %C& (%&) %*! +,-. s81=%*? / %094'
@&-+315*'... This is the tenth year since the great opponent of Priam (40-1). But the
Choruss view is retrospective, looking back to the time of Calchas speech from the very
point in the future towards which his own prophetic language will soon gesture. The clear
foregrounding of these two inverted temporalities in the first words of each exposes the
complex temporal relationship that underpins this mimetic interweaving of framing and
embedded voices. Within the authoritative frame of the Chorus, Calchas speech is a
remembered event of the past. But, when the seer is granted his own first-person voice, it
is the hic et nunc of the Chorus that is relegated to the distance of a future time.
The destabilizing spatio-temporal interplay of the two voices is vividly rendered in
the second point of contact, brought about through the close resemblance of the eagle
portent interpreted by Calchas to the vulture simile with which the Chorus had earlier
described the Atreidai. The transformation of the Choruss powerful imagery into the
literal omen has been much discussed,
44
but its role in creating a sense of proximity, and
even verbal contact, between framer and framed has been largely overlooked. My next
chapter will return in detail to this passage. For the moment it is sufficient to note that the
intricate exchange of attributes between the two images creates the sense that the Chorus
truly shares a single voice with the speaker embedded in its song, that despite the
anachronism of the claim the hierarchically related speakers inhabit the same plane of
speech and reference.
45


believe in and support Calchas narrative of the events at Aulis, but are wrong to do so. Gantz
(1983) pp. 69-78.
44
Exemplary are Zeitlin (1965) pp. 481-2, Lebeck (1971) pp. 8, 13, Rosenmeyer (1982) pp. 126-
7, Heath (1999b) pp. 20-7.
45
Similar is the juxtaposition, explored with great subtlety by Simon Goldhill, of Artemis
comparisons in Od. 6, the first spoken by the narrator, the second by Odysseus, who will soon
take the narrators roll over for himself. Goldhill (1988b).
50
Such subtle correspondences between framer and framed are set in relief by the
unique lyric structure of the Aulis narrative which features Calchas oratio recta. Within
the complex movement of the parodos, the first account of the events at Aulis (lines 104-
59) forms a formally self-contained song-within-a-song, distinguished from its
surrounding sections by a marked difference in meter and especially by the repetition of a
refrain at the end of each of its three stanzas:
46
4o"1&*& 4o"1&*& #n)0, -E 3' #] &15=-:
(121, 138, 159). The refrain connects the song, but it would be misleading to describe its
threefold iteration as mere repetition. The initial use of the refrain lends a sense of ritual
to the Choruss words;
47
emerging from their emotional narration, the ritually charged
vocatives introduce a heightened focus on their choral authority.
48
Then, taking advantage
of the formal structure of the ode, Aeschylus places the second instance of the refrain in
the middle of the embedded speech. Without any formal distinction of the voices through
the customary inquit formulae, it is impossible to determine whether the refrain is voiced
by the Chorus or by the internal, mimetic figure in the midst of whose speech it occurs.
Are the words an unexpected interruption through which the Chorus reassert their status
as primary speaker or rather a prophetic echo of a song that has yet to be sung? The
boundary between framer and framed cannot be located and as a result the spatio-
temporal identity of the performative hic et nunc has become correspondingly opaque.
The final iteration of the refrain comes at the end of an inquit formula. Where earlier the
boundary between voices could not be determined, now the Chorus explicitly align their
voice with that of the embedded seer.
49
The uneasy harmony of embedded speaker and
framing narrator is unmistakable, freely declared by the Chorus themselves as they reflect
upon the speech they have just impersonated.
50


46
The triadic structure of the first Aulis song is unusual for Aeschylus, who generally composes
his lyrics in successive pairs of matching strophe and antistrophe. The use of a refrain in this
fashion within a single triad is unparalleled. Burris (2004) p. 135.
47
Moritz (1979), Easterling (1988).
48
Against the Choruss ritualizing language, we must set the seers own, highly performative,
almost ritual invocation of Apollo at 146: a counter song which threatens to unsettle and
overpower the triadic song of the Chorus. On reference to paianic language within tragedy, see
Rutherford (1994-5), Ford (2006) p. 291, Swift (2010) chap. 3.
49
Bers (1997) p. 33.
50
Griffith is perhaps overly literal when he claims, on the basis of the connection drawn here, that
line 138 should be included within the words quoted from Calchas himself. This retrospective
51
In both of our poets, the unsettling of the hierarchy between framer and framed
erodes the foundations on which the spatio-temporal reality of the primary speaker is
based; the blending of voice bleeds into the representation of a performative hic et nunc.
The powerful presence of the embedded speakers voice threatens to collapse the
dramatic coherence and dictional integrity of the framing speaker. In impersonating the
speech of Calchas, the Choruss ritual refrain propels them across time, but this mobility
also threatens the mimetic fidelity of their location in the palace of Klytemnestra at
Argos. Aeschylus allows his Chorus to step outside their accustomed dictional mode, but
in doing so they loose their sure mimetic footing. Likewise for Pindar, the immediacy of
the embedded speakers voice merges past and future, moving the first person of the poet
into an uncharted realm outside of straightforward chronology. In Olympian 6 the voices
of Adrastus and Pindar are fused into one; neither speaker can fully inhabit the world of
the other, but nor can they remain entirely within their proper spheres. The hierarchical
polyphony of oratio recta points to the boundaries of dictional mode on which the poets
rely to bring their compositions into performative reality. But as the charged use of the
trope prompts a more concerted examination of these dictional parameters, it also calls
into question the stability of poetic voice as a means of establishing a cohesive
performative hic et nunc.

And in Response
Having examined the relationship between framer and framed, we now turn our attention
to how the voices within the frame of oratio recta relate to each other. In archaic Greek
poetry of the mixed dictional mode, direct speech is almost always dialogic in nature.
Embedded characters speak and are spoken to in turn. Indeed, the formal language of
hexameter epic developed in such a way as to facilitate the representation of exchange of
speech, boasting a rich store of formulaic lines to signal responsive speech,
51
and even the
marked lack thereof.
52
Such reciprocity of exchange between embedded speakers is rarely
found in Pindar and Aeschylus. The mimetic voices of oratio recta in our authors are

correction undermines the temporal play and confusion which the progression of the refrain is
designed to produce. Griffith (2009) p. 43 n. 82
51
On patterns of Homeric dialogue, see most recently, Beck (2005) esp. pp. 25-45.
52
Montiglio (2000) pp. 82-115.
52
most often isolated figures within their embedded narratives, speaking with an
immediacy that is denied to those with whom they interact. Instead, the asymmetry of this
internal structure forces the embedded speakers into an anachronistic dialogue with the
voices that frame and impersonate their speech.
Although lack of response is the rule rather than the exception in Pindar and
Aeschylus oratio recta, it is not for that reason normative. In other poets, formulaic
descriptions of silence counteract the uncertainty that a lack of response might otherwise
create. By contrast, Pindar and Aeschylus do not offer the comfort of explicit
explanation. Silence, and in particular the narrative repression of embedded response,
creates a void: a sense of distance and opacity that stands in opposition to the immediacy
created by the trope of direct speech. The suppression of embedded interlocutors points to
the framing narrator and allows his voice to inhabit the space in which we would expect a
second embedded mimetic speaker. Thus it is as a subset of the relationship between
framer and framed that we should approach this internal dynamic. The silences that
surround the vividly embedded voices of oratio recta provide our poets with another
means of highlighting the spatio-temporal instability thrown into relief by their
manipulation of dictional mode.
For Pindar, the powerful silence with which oratio recta is almost always met is
developed through the distancing structures that we found associated with the embedded
speakers themselves.
53
The internal asymmetry of oratio recta is regularly emphasized by
a corresponding imbalance in the status of the participants in the embedded conversation.
As we saw in Adrastus speech above, death can separate an embedded speaker from his
desired addressee.
54
More often, the interlocutors are divided by nature: god and man.
55


53
Although it is his standard practice, Pindar does not exclude dialogue entirely from his oratio
recta. Of 19 discrete episodes of oratio recta, three present a verbal response in oratio recta. The
exceptions are the exchange between Pelias and Jason in Pythian 4, Cheirons response to Apollo
in Pythian 9, and Zeus response to Polydeuces in Nemean 10. In the latter two instances, the
internal dialogue can be seen to fit with the broader concerns of Pindars normal model of non-
response (e.g. the unequal status of interlocutors, the impossibility of direct communication, and
the central importance of prophecy and questions of time in the content of the speeches). The
speeches of the latter part of Pythian 4 are, like the poem itself, a true exception to established
Pindaric usage. In line with the unusually epic structure and tone of the narrative itself, Pindar
here alone adopts the traditional epic forms of oratio recta, presenting his embedded speakers in
unproblematically responsive dialogue. Cf. Nnlist (2007) pp. 245-6.
54
So also P.8.44-55.
53
Most dynamically, knowledge of the future the subject to which we will turn in a
moment functions to differentiate internal speakers. The construction of an internal
hierarchy which corresponds to the relationship between poet and embedded speakers
offers further ground for Pindar to explore the questions of voice which underpin his
interest in the trope of oratio recta.
For an illustration we turn to the second case of direct speech in Olympian 6. Where
the speech at the poems opening explicitly exposes the upending of dictional hierarchies
by linking the poets voice with that of his embedded speaker, the second speech
approaches the relationship between framer and framed more obliquely, making use of
the dynamics internal to the embedded discourse to explore how the use of direct speech
reverberates within the broader dictional structure of the poem. The isolation of the
embedded speaker turns our attention once again to the relationship between framer and
framed, further unsettling the hierarchies of voice which characterize the trope. The more
subtly developed, second oratio recta is set within an extended mythical narrative, of a
kind fairly common in epinicia, that draws attention to the victors immortal ancestry.
56

This particular tale concerns the fate of Iamos, the son of Apollo with the mortal Evadne,
herself the daughter of Poseidon. The circumstances are as follows: At the time of his
birth, Iamos maternal grandfather, Aipytos, consulted the Pythian oracle and learned that
his grandson was the son of Apollo, fated to become a distinguished prophet (49-51).
Grown to manhood, Iamos desires confirmation of his extraordinary status and lineage.
He travels to the banks of the Alpheos and calls upon his divine progenitors, Poseidon
and Apollo, and receives a response from the latter.
As Pindar narrates the scene, Iamos query, reported in loose oratio obliqua, is met by
the unmediated voice of Apollo in oratio recta (57-66):
-#8)&<' 3' ()#W J8?,*,-#>=&*1* "=F#&
548)E& F4', U"># %0,,L 54-4F4W' (5="#,,# s*,#13<&' #I8?F+4&,
k& )8$9*&*&, 54W -*P*>$8*& B="*? ;#*3%=-4' ,5*)$&,
4n-0:& "4*-8$>*& -1%=& -1&' j 5#>4", 60
&?5-E' H)4+;81*'. @&-#>;09P4-* 3' @8-1#)A'
)4-8+4 ,,4, %#-=""4,0& -0 &1&. 8,*, -05&*&,
3#V8* )=95*1&*& (' Jc84& e%#& >=%4' )1,;#&.

55
O. 1.75-85; 6.16-17, 62-3; 8.42-46; 13.67-9; P. 3.40-42; N. 10.76-79, 80-88;
56
On myths of divine ancestry, Khnken (1971) pp. 94-103.
54

o5*&-* 3' HpO"*K* )0-84& @"+F4-*& !8*&+*?
Q&;4 * X)4,# ;O,4?8E& 3+3?%*& 65
%4&-*,6&4', 5-".

But when he had attained the fruit of lovely, golden-crowned Youth, he went into
the middle of the Alpheos and called out to broad-ruling Poseidon, his progenitor,
and to the bowman and guardian of god-built Delos, and asked, under the night
sky, that some honor be bestowed upon him that would aid his people. And in
response his fathers clear voice replied and came to him Arise, my son, follow
hence my speech into a land shared by all. And they went to the steep rock of the
lofty son of Kronos and there he bestowed to him a double treasury of prophecy

In contrast to the earlier Adrastus narrative, which was introduced precisely to sponsor
and authorize the poets speech, there is no evident link between the poet and embedded
speaker. The extended narrative of Iamos genealogy has run for thirty-four lines (more
than half the poem prior to Apollos speech). Throughout the narrative the poet has not
spoken in the first person, having last done so when he introduced the mythical tale at
lines 24-8. By the time Apollos divine voice rings out in oratio recta, the mythical world
of Iamos ancestors has long been the uninterrupted focus of the poem. Likewise, there is
no marked reappearance of the poets first person following the conclusion of the speech.
The narrative is structured so that Apollos words first resonate against silence of the
other characters inhabiting the mythical tale. The shadowy paraphrase through which the
poet presents the speeches of these other mythical actors sets the words of Apollo in stark
relief. The gods speech is introduced as a response to Iamos through a variation on the
hexameter formula for a spoken response (@&-#>;09P4-* 3#). But the vivid immediacy
of his words is not matched by his interlocutor. Apollo straightaway establishes his
presence through the power of his voice,
57
addressing Iamos with a bold imperative and
vocative combination and building dramatic tone in his subsequent deictic reference
(3#V8*). The gods speech creates its own hic et nunc; his words call special attention to
their mimetic diction, emphasizing the formal immediacy of oratio recta through deictic

57
Only after his speech has been introduced in this manner does the narrator announce the gods
arrival by Iamos side on the river bank from which he has just uttered his prayer. The light
hysteron proteron almost suggests that Apollos presence is indistinguishable from his speech,
that he is present only in verbal form. Cf. Carne-Ross (1976) p. 19, Dickson (1990) pp. 114-5. As
a voice emerging from oratio recta, this lack of physical properties corresponds nicely to the
gods disembodied impersonation by the diegetic poet.
55
references to both time and space. But the mimetic reality of Apollos verbal appearance
contrasts with the mediated silence and hazy remoteness that characterizes his
interlocutor, Iamos. Apollos dynamic speech is isolated within the mythical frame; his
performative address is met by silence.
The use of oratio recta turns the gods appearance into a double apparition: to Iamos
beside the Alpheos but also to the hic et nunc of the poetic present. The formal isolation
of Apollos voice within the poem means that the performative power of his direct speech
cannot be fully discharged within the mythical narrative in which it is located. The vivid
presence of his address is marked in its lack of a commensurate response. The
suppression of Iamos voice draws our attention to the poet, whose narrative role is
responsible for bringing the gods voice into vivid reality, but who suppresses his own
voice by ceding the first person to his embedded speaker. The power of Apollos
unmediated words is signaled both by the poet, who introduces the divine speech with the
marked term artieps ossa, and by Apollo himself, who makes self-conscious reference
to his voice as the vehicle through which Iamos glory will be attained (>=%4' )1,;#&).
The power of Apollos direct speech not only overshadows his mortal interlocutor within
the myth, it also eclipses the poets own voice, effacing the hic et nunc reality of poetic
performance through the force of its own more dynamically deictic expression. The
imbalance that governed the relationship between Apollo and Iamos extends to that
between framer and framed. The formal hierarchy of oratio recta is upended through the
overpowering vividness of the embedded imitation.
The final elements of the Iamos tale, in which the young man makes the journey to
the hill of Kronos as dictated by Apollo to receive his divinely apportioned gifts, are
narrated in an oblique tone which contrasts strongly with the unmediated impersonation
of Apollos speech beside the Alpheos. The subsequent events refer to further speech by
the god, but his words are now veiled by those of the diegetic narrator (65-71):
Q&;4 * X)4,# ;O,4?8E& 3+3?%*& 65
%4&-*,6&4', -$54 %C& >:&7& @5*6#1&
p#?30:& [9&:-*&, #]- & 3C ;84,?%=J4&*' (";c&
845"0O', ,#%&E& ;="*' U"54q3<&, )4-8+
j*8-=& -# 5-+,b )"#1,-$%F8*-*& -#;%$& -# %091,-*& @0;":&,
O&E' () @58*-=-L F:% -$- 4] J8O,-A81*& ;0,;41 50"#?,#&, 70
(P * )*"65"#1-*& 54;' ""4&4' 90&*' 4%13<&
56

There he gave to him a double treasury of prophecy, to hear then the voice that
knows no lies and when battle-bold Heracles, the holy shoot of Alkaidai, should
come, to establish for his father a festival full of men and the greatest ordinance
of games and he commanded him at that time to establish his oracle by the
highest altar of Zeus, whence the race of the Iamidai have been renowned
throughout Greece

The narration echoes Apollos first-person speech in referring to the gods phone. And
likewise in the narrators account, the ability to hear the unerring voice of Apollo is
identified as part of the divine benefaction that Iamos received. As a prophet, Iamos is
endowed with the special ability to hear the god speak just as the poet has allowed all to
do through the use of oratio recta; the speech itself is a gift from the god. But where the
mimetic voice of Apollo was able to fuse the gift and its explanation in a single utterance,
the poet must stand at a remove, explaining events without enacting them. This
distancing effect, reclaiming the hic et nunc of the diegetic present, is continued in the
description of the second element of Iamos double treasury: the foundation of a sacred
shrine at Olympia. Another divine speech must be imagined to accompany the imparting
of this second gift, as supported by the enunciative keleusen at the end of the passage. But
this second divine command is only perceived through silence, in the space created by the
narrator as he steps away from the embedded voice that had, only moments before, so
powerfully possessed his own.
The muting of the embedded speakers powerful voice in the shift to the oblique
sphere allows Pindar to regain his hold on the chronology of the poem. With this final
element of the mythic episode, the inverted hic et nunc of Apollos epiphanic speech is
replaced by a diachronic temporality. As the narrative returns to the poets present time,
Pindar fixes the site at Olympia as the locus of a progressive chronological extension that
stretches from Iamos down to his victorious descendant, Hagesias. The vibrant proximity
of Apollos speech, rendered momentarily present through the power of oratio recta, has
been mediated through the distancing effect of a repressive oratio obliqua. The gods
voice is concealed within the poets; the artieps ossa recedes into the remote past, its
power contained within the frame of Pindars song. But the effect of the gods brief
mimetic appearance is still felt. The journey that Pindar initiated at 24-8, when his poetic
mules carried the tale back into the mythic past, has been appropriated by the voice of
57
Apollo, whose directions to follow his voice from within the embedded myth have
transported the framing narration to Olympia and the chresterion of the Iamidai.
58
The
internal dynamics of speech and non-response are slowly drawn into the interaction of
poet and embedded speaker to create a complex nexus of interwoven voices in varying
temporal registers.
Aeschylus, like Pindar, does not permit dialogue in oratio recta and his embedded
speakers are likewise isolated within the hierarchical frame of direct speech. As in
Pindar, this isolation results in a reconfiguration of the relationship between framer and
framed. But because Aeschylus does not limit his oratio recta to the mythical past, the
effects of this internal asymmetry are even more readily felt within the voice of the
primary speaker. At times Aeschylus even explicitly links the internal relationship to the
formal hierarchy of oratio recta, figuring the embedded speech as an address directed to
the framing speaker, either in the past or the future. Thus at Agamemnon 590-3,
Klytemnestra quotes the reproaches that were recently laid at her feet, closely echoing in
her oratio recta the words with which the Chorus had addressed her earlier in the play.
59

The embedded speech is an act of aggression against the Chorus the queen
commandeers their voice in her biting impersonation but it also sets the triumphant
language of Klytemnestras hic et nunc expression against the earlier scene, destablizing
her own mimetic integrity as well. Such moments of exaggerated overlap between the
internal and external structures of oratio recta reflect the central importance of the
tropes dictional force. They are clear illustrations of how the framing speaker can
become dislocated from the hic et nunc reality of his own voice through the
impersonation of another. But even when the framing speaker is not explicitly implicated
in the speech that he impersonates, he nevertheless mediates the internal asymmetries of
direct speech. And, much as we found in Pindar, the structures of internal communication
imposed by the framer reflect back on his hierarchical engagement with the voices that he
has embedded in his own.

58
This point is made with great subtlety by D.S. Carne-Ross who details how the poets
movement is appropriated by Apollo and Iamos when they move from the Alpheos to the hill of
Kronos in Olympia after Apollos speech: Carne-Ross (1976) p. 20. More recently, see Calame
(forthcoming).
59
54+ -+' %' (&+)-:& #i)#, >8?5-:8D& 317 / )#1,;#K,4 S8*+4& &V& )#)*8;{,;41 3*5#K'; /
5=8-4 )8E' 9?&415E' 4e8#,;41 5048.
58
Turning once again to the Agamemnon parodos, we can see that the complex
structure of the ode results in precisely this sort of mediated interweaving of figures
internal and external to direct speech. When Calchas prophetic speech is concluded, his
words as we saw earlier are linked directly to the speech of the Chorus with no
indication that his speech was met with a verbal response within the embedded scene.
After the formal closure of the speech at 156-9, the Chorus break off their narration and
offer a prayer to Zeus. The hymn begins with a sudden shift in theme and meter and
runs for 23 lines across three stanzas. It comes as a surprise when, with no corresponding
shift in meter, the Chorus resume their Aulis narrative at line 184.
60
In this second
narrative section, the Chorus relate the events which followed the seers speech,
including a second instance of oratio recta in which Agamemnon expresses his views on
the plight of the Greeks and his own mortal dilemma. Agamemnons speech is clearly
linked to the earlier direct speech of Calchas, but their precise relationship is unresolved.
The exact chronology across the hiatus is difficult to determine. The internal
interruption of the hymn functions like a choral song within the choral song, creating a
sense of temporal extension within the Aulis narrative despite the fact that it is an
expression of the Choruss concerns within the hic et nunc.
61
Nevertheless, it remains
unclear what, if any, delay has taken place between Calchas interpretation of the eagle
portent and Agamemnons response. When the Chorus begin their narrative anew, they
detail the dreadful conditions and adverse winds which kept the Greek troops from
setting sail, but no larger timeframe is given to relate this period of stagnation to Calchas
earlier warning of such delays. The events of this second narration are marked as
subsequent to those of the earlier narration by the conjunction kai toth (184), however
the specific temporal relationship is remarkably opaque.
62
Against this upending of

60
Schein (2009) p. 388. On the metrical construction of the parodos, Scott (1984) pp. 30-43.
61
In this respect the hymn functions as a kind of internal analogue to the parodos itself, which is
a dramatic representation of the time in which the beacon will travel from Troy, even though its
subject matter ranges across the past.
62
Barrett (2007) reads the events as linked but only vaguely. In describing the impenetrable
chronology of the passage, he speaks of dizzying anachronies [which] are accompanied by other
temporal devices that deserve notice: repetition and extreme summary that verges on ellipsis. p.
262. Schein suggests that the relative spatial and temporal vagueness in the lyric portion of the
parodos has to do with the Chorus way of viewing human events in the perspective of a divine or
cosmic order, not unlike the perspective of Kalkhas himself. Schein (2009) p. 390.
59
chronological certainty, a connection between Calchas speech and Agamemnons
response is ensured by the seers presence following the hymn, his speech represented in
a brief oratio obliqua (198-204):
63

()#W 3C 54W )158*V
J#+%4-*' [""* %{J48
F81;6-#8*& )8$%*1,1& 200
%=&-1' Q5"49P#& )8*>08:&
l8-#%1&, Z,-# J;$&4 F=5-
-8*1' ()158*6,4&-4' U-8#+-
34' 3=58? %R 54-4,J#K&

But then the seer shrieked to the leaders for another, graver means against the
harsh storm, calling upon Artemis, so that the sons of Atreus struck the earth with
their scepters but could not hold back their tears.

Paradoxically, this narrative insistence on the connection between the two speeches
highlights their disjunction be it merely a formal product of narrative or with an added
temporal element since by drawing the speakers, though not their speeches, into such
proximity the lack of dialogue becomes all the more striking. The use of the verb klaz in
line 201 establishes a particularly strong link to Calchas earlier speech, which was
described in the closing frame with the compound apoklaz (156). The echo suggests a
parallelism between the two utterances, if not an outright unity.
64
The suppression of
Calchas voice within the oblique mode, contrasting with the strong first person accorded
to him earlier, stands as a foil for the introduction of Agamemnon as a second embedded
speaking figure in the parodos.
Agamemnons speech is not introduced as a response but as a self-standing
utterance with a standard inquit formula devoid of interlocutive force despite the
deliberate reappearance of Calchas as a speaker in oratio obliqua. Once the speech itself
begins, this sense of isolation only grows stronger. Agamemnons words are more self-
directed than engaging any external party (206-18):

63
Bers (1997) p. 33, would limit the oratio obliqua here to the invocation, l8-#%1&, but I believe
that the whole clause detailing other, heavier means ()158*V /J#+%4-*' [""* %{J48 /
F81;6-#8*& )8$%*1,1&) should be taken as reported speech.
64
Bers (1997) p. 33, The powerful verbum dicendi repeats, in simplex form, the word used at
156 to close the OR, but Calchas awful words are not allowed to come to the surface; rather their
effect is seen in the Atreidaes gesture, striking the ground with their staves.
60
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)#81$89:' ()1;?%#K&
;0%1'. #] 978 #eO.

The old lord spoke, saying Grave destruction is it to disobey, but grave too
should I cut down my child, prize of my house, staining a fathers hands with the
streams of a virgin sacrificed upon the altar. Which of these things is devoid of
evils? How can I be a deserter and break faith with my allies? For it is right to
crave with an overly-spirited drive a wind-stopping sacrifice and the blood of a
virgin. Yes, let this be good.

The disruption of dialogue between the two embedded speakers is reflected in the internal
dynamics of the speeches, with Calchas invoking the gods (nA1*& 3C 54"0: s41<&4)
and Agamemnon addressing his anguished questions to no one in particular. The
speeches are not directed at each other. Rather it is the voice of the Chorus which sets
them in dialogue while at the same time orchestrating our keen perception of the
disjunction. Agamemnons oratio recta is not structured in direct relation to the Chorus.
Instead the speech triangulates the three different voices of the parodos, setting the
already established contrast between internal and framing temporal structures against, on
the one hand, the chronological tension within the internal episode itself represented by
the lack of direct communication between Agamemnon and Calchas and, on the other,
the role of the Chorus in further unsettling this internal chronology through their
interruption of the narrative exemplified by the hymn to Zeus and the subordination of
Calchas second speech in oratio obliqua.
Agamemnons final words, eu gar ei, resonate as a clear rearticulation, in both
language and position, of the ailinon refrain that formed the key point of contact between
61
the Chorus and Calchas throughout the earlier speech.
65
The use of the modified refrain in
Agamemnons speech establishes the ultimate embedded response to Calchas words as a
rejoinder of sorts to the intricate interweaving of Chorus and embedded speaker that
came before. The anachronistic song is stretched out, across the Choruss intermittent
hymn to Zeus to express itself in one final refrain. All three speakers function together
to present a unified picture of the discontinuous communication within the Choruss
narrative. The proximity of expression found in the interplay between the Chorus and
Calchas is recast by Agamemnons distant response. Agamemnon takes up the role of
interlocutor separated from the seer not by time, as the Chorus were, but by the narrative
structure in which the Chorus present his words. The effect of this restructuring is to call
our attention back to the hierarchical relationship of the speakers, reasserting the
narrative role of the Chorus just as they are about to abandon this function in the face of
the horrors that it would require them to relate. The Choruss ultimate silence, framed in
terms of the inescapability of time and fate, returns once more to the power of Calchas
words: -7 3' Q&;#& *}-' #i3*& *}-' (&&0): -0J&41 3C !="J4&-*' *I5 [584&-*1.
What then occurred I neither saw nor will I speak it. The arts of Calchas were not
unfulfilled (248-9). Even without permitting Calchas to speak again in the first person,
the Chorus are forced to reflect on the destabilizing effect that their impersonations have
had. The narrative command that they asserted with such certainty at the beginning of the
ode has been eroded by the internal polyphonies produced by their orationes rectae.

Voice Past and Future
So far our examination of Pindars and Aeschylus use of oratio recta has concentrated
on characteristics that are primarily formal in nature. Nonetheless, we found that the
structural features that characterize shifts in dictional mode between framing speaker and
embedded voice were distinguished by a consistent impact on the spatio-temporal
properties of poetic speech. One might be inclined to attribute this tendency to the
inherently temporal properties of the trope of oratio recta: to see Pindars and Aeschylus
propensity to engage with questions of poetic time and space as little more than an
organic outgrowth of the use of the trope itself. In truth, the causal chain runs in the

65
Cf. Winnington-Ingram (1954) p. 26.
62
opposite direction. In order to appreciate the central role that oratio recta plays in
allowing Pindar and Aeschylus to formulate their new understanding of poetic voice in
the world of the script, it is necessary to recognize that these spatio-temporal features are
consciously sought out by our poets: that they are in fact the very reason why the poets
rely on oratio recta to explore their poetic concerns.
There are certain themes which facilitate a far more complex appreciation of the
spatio-temporal domain that oratio recta is so ideally positioned to expose, and none
more so than prophecy, which adds its own intrinsically problematic chronology to the
structure of embedded speech. In both Pindar and Aeschylus, we find that an
intensification of the formal structure of oratio recta is achieved through the regular
pairing of the trope with speech that is prophetic in theme or content. The spatio-temporal
aspect of embedded mimesis, which destabilizes the hierarchy of poetic chronology by
establishing an alternative hic et nunc to that of the framing speaker, is corroborated and
exagerated by the fact that the speeches themselves most often focus on questions of
time.
The vast majority of the embedded figures whom Pindar allows to speak in direct
speech impart knowledge of the future.
66
There are strong similarities between the figure
of the mantis and Pindars own forward-looking poetic voice, especially in the epinician
odes.
67
However, Pindars regular combination of prophetic speech and oratio recta
cannot be explained by generic considerations; it is a consistent feature of Pindaric direct
speech across generic boundaries whereas, by contrast, the epinician oratio recta of his
contemporary Bacchylides exhibits no interest in mantic themes.
68
More importantly, the
prophets embedded in Pindars mythic digressions are separated from the poet by the
chronological structure of the poems which imposes an important distinction with respect

66
The speeches that I determine to be prophetic in either theme or content are: O.6.16-17; O.6 62-
3; O.8.42-46; O.13.67-9; P. 3.40-42; P.4.13-57; P.8.44-55; P.9.30-36, 39-65; N. 10.76-79, 80-88;
I. 6.43-49, 52-54; I.8.35
a
-45, Hymn fr. 43 SM, Pae. 2.73-5, Pae. 4.39-?, Pae. 8a.14-?. It is
possible that Erginos speech in Olympian 4 should also be included in this list, as argued by
Suarez de la Torre (1988) p. 90.
67
The voice of the prophet in Pindars epinicia is treated at length by Athanassaki (1990). See
also Suarez de la Torre (1988), Suarez de la Torre (1989), Suarez de la Torre (1990), Dickson
(1990), Schmid (1996) pp. 46-57. The subject of prophets in general is treated by Duchemin
(1956), Anastase (1975) pp. 261-80.
68
Nor does Bacchylides show interest in using oratio recta to convey prophecy in his
dithyrambic poetry.
63
to their perceptions of the future. As Hilary Mackie explains, although the future events
foretold by embedded figures lie in the future from the standpoint of myth they are
nevertheless well known to the poet and his audience and, from their perspective,
already long past.
69
The suggestively complex relationship described by Mackie is
redoubled by the repeated use of oratio recta to convey embedded prophecies. Mantic
statements of the past are brought into the hic et nunc of direct speech to produce a
matrix of conflicting and conflated temporalities and view-points.
Nowhere is Pindars complex play between forward-looking mantic speech and the
problematically embedded vitality of oratio recta more dynamically on display than in
Medeas extended speech in Pythian 4. The Colchian prophetess is granted control of the
narrative in the poems second stanza and offers a complex prophetic vision in
uninterrupted oratio recta for more than forty lines (longer than the entirety of many of
Pindars extant odes). Her words, situated in an uncertain hic et nunc within the mythical
past and ranging across many generations of Battidai past and future, stand in stark
contrast to the insistent spatio-temporal frame established by the poet at the outset of the
ode: ,=%#8*& %C& J8R ,# )48.@&38W >+":1 / ,-<%#& Today it is necessary for you to
stand beside a man who is a friend (1-2). Medeas bold speech is an extreme example of
how the mantic speech of an embedded figure can unsettle the hic et nunc of the poets
voice. We cannot now examine in detail the complex resolution of her words, which
result in the poet taking up the spatio-temporal position of his embedded speaker and
addressing his own words to the mythical heroes to whom Medeas speech was directed
(59-63).
70
This results in an unprecedented departure from established modes of Pindaric
composition in the subsequent almost epic (or Stesichorean) extended narrative of the
Argonauts. Similarly destablizing effects can also be identified in the less exceptional
speeches of Olympian 6, where a consistent focus on mantic insight runs throughout the

69
Mackie (2003) p. 80, also pp. 87-8 in which she outlines some of the important distinctions
between the epinician poet and the figure of the mantis: Unlike the prophetic speakers in
epinician myth [], the poet cannot be so bold as to make definite assertions about what the
future may hold.
70
The use of apostrophe by the poet here, to address Battos in the mythical past, is exemplary of
the spatio-temporal power of the trope that we will examine in the next section.
64
poem.
71
As we saw above, not only is Apollos speech a prophetic utterance, but its
articulation imparts a prophetic power to its addressee. The oversized mantic force of
Apollos speech matches the passages emphatically mimetic character, which threatens
to overwhelm the compositional choices of the poet long after the oratio recta has been
concluded. Just as his voice emerges from the past into the hic et nunc through direct
speech, the foresight of the gods prophecy reaches out of the embedded future of the
mythic narrative to control the future of the poet himself. And yet, although Apollos
voice is experienced as an unmediated expression of his presence, the chronology of the
poetic frame precludes the possibility of following the gods words to their true mantic
destination except through the poets narration. At the same time that Apollos speech
erodes the stable hic et nunc of the poet, one cannot look to the future through the vivid
speech of Apollo without recalling the distance that stands between the poet and this
utterance of the past. The poet can share the gods prophetic voice, but not his mantic
vision. No matter how successful his embedded impersonation may be, or how faithfully
it relocates the god in the vivid reality of the present Pindar, like Adrastus, cannot efface
the boundaries of time and space that separate him from the all-knowing mantic eye.
The worlds of the two voices cannot be reconciled. What the embedded speaker sees as
future, the poet must look upon as past. But if both figures occupy the poems hic et
nunc, if both claim the authority to speak in their own voices, then the incompatibility of
a then that cannot be shared by both speakers makes it difficult to locate a poetic
now.
Oratio recta with mantic content occurs less regularly in Aeschylus than in Pindar,
but there is still a strong sympathy between the theme and trope.
72
For Aeschylus, whose

71
The poems clear focus on themes of prophecy is in part stipulated by the laudandus Iamid
lineage, but the thematic resonances are so close to those found in other poems in which the
victor does not claim membership in a long line of seers that this particular detail does not
preclude generalization. In addition to the early invocation of Amphiaraos in his guise as inspired
seer, all of the figures of the Iamos myth are engaged in prophetic discourse to some degree:
Iamos becomes a prophet following his encounter with Apollo and even Aipytos is said to have
learned of his grandsons future power by consulting the Pythian oracle and to report the
prophecy (' %=&?#) to his subjects (47-52). On the fascinating history of the Iamidai, see
Flower (2008).
72
The following constitute direct speech in Aeschylus that is prophetic in content or theme: Sep.
580-9 (434, 647-8), Ag. 126-55, 206-17, 410-26.
65
gaze is trained on questions of prophecy throughout the extant plays,
73
the idea of mantic
speech need not always be approached literally. Because oratio recta is not limited to the
past in Aeschylean drama, oftentimes impersonated speeches may be prophetic in the
sense that they anticipate events which lie in the future from the perspective of the
primary speaker.
74
We will see the powerful effect that such prophetic speeches can
have when we examine Orestes peculiar use of the trope in the Choephoroi in chapter
four.
75
When direct speech is employed to convey truly prophetic content, however, the
resulting temporal and spatial disorientation creates an effect similar to that which we
found in Pindar. At the same time, the temporal proximity of Aeschylus embedded
speakers to the framing voices which impersonate them means that the impact on the
poems chronology is experienced with greater immediacy, heightening the already
powerful play of voice upon voice.
In the Agamemnon parodos, for example, oratio recta is used to convey a past
prophecy that has direct bearing on the present circumstances of the Choruss framing
speech. Calchas prophetic interpretation of the savage eagles looks forward to a future
that the Chorus are about to experience, in which they will themselves have recourse to
strikingly similar bird imagery. The harmony of their voices and songs across time is
matched by their anachronistic perspectives on the same event: the sacking of Troy by the
Argives. What stands ten years in the future for Calchas is an immediately present
experience for the Chorus. And as the Chorus train their gaze back towards his prophecy
at Aulis, Calchas is, like his direct speech, already participating in the knowledge of that
future time. By the time they sing their retrospective parodos narrative, the Chorus have
caught up with Calchas prophetic insight. Both speakers await the return of
Agamemnon, though with differing vantages on the (still) future event. The effect
replicates that which we found at work in Pindar, whereby the unstable hierarchy of
framing and embedded speech is made unquestionably temporal by the mantic content of
the oratio recta. The incompatible chronologies of the two speakers and, more
importantly, the incongruous nature of their respective relationships to time itself

73
See, for example Peradotto (1969), Adrados (1989), Roberts (1984).
74
As we find at Sup. 402, Ch. 569-70, 575, 718, Eum. 757-60 and fr.78a24 (Theoroi).
75
Below, pp. 203-5.
66
becomes the unequivocal message of the juxtaposition of voices. Prophetic content is an
essential element in the creation of this poetic time-scape, helping not only to delineate
its contours but to lay the ground on which the meeting of incongruous voices can take
place.
The contrast of a retrospective unfolding of time set against a forward-looking
prophetic speech brought vividly into the present through oratio recta is continued in the
plays first stasimon, where another embedded voice from the past offers mantic visions
of the pasts future in direct speech. In this second choral song, the domn prophtai
lament Helens departure to Troy and the grief that it will bring. The interweaving of
voices that we found in the parodos is continued in the first stasimon through the lack of
a clear demarcation at the end of the prophets speech. The lack of a boundary again
allows the Chorus to share in the prophetic voice that they impersonate.
76
The temporal
uncertainty of the speech, a question of duration as much as of chronology,
77
is paired
with a geographical doubling, blurring the location of the seers and the house that they so
emphatically invoke in their opening words: nv nv 3D%4 3D%4 54W )8$%*1 (410). Like
Helen herself who is split between Argos and Troy (nv "0J*' 54W ,-+F*1 >1"=&*8#'
411), the seers location cannot be pinned down to either place.
78
The indexical language
of the embedded speaker excludes the framing Chorus from both the time and space
created by the utterance. But the use of oratio recta means that the distanced Chorus are
paradoxically able to share the power of the past mantic declaration, having already come
to know the truth of its predictions. Mirroring the effect produced by Calchas speech, the
mantic content of the prophets speech enhances the innate capacity of oratio recta to
create a spatial and temporal matrix that bridges past and present.


76
Athanassaki (1993-4) p. 161. See also Fletcher (1999a) esp. p. 33.
77
The speech is concluded at different points by editors, either at line 415, 419, or 426. The
conservative position is argued, albeit not without hesitation, by Bers (1997) p. 37. The more
expansive reading, which I support, is defended by Athanassaki (1993-4) p. 150 with
bibliography. If the speech is extended to 426, as the force of the closing lines at 427-8 would
suggest, then the content of the speech is doubly mantic, making internal reference to the
interpretations of the houses /&#18$>4&-*1 (420ff.)
78
Athanassaki (1993-4) passim.
67
2. THE STAGE IS SET
In contrast to the relatively infrequent occurrences of oratio recta in the poetry of Pindar
and Aeschylus, apostrophe is commonly employed by both poets. In dramatic texts the
use of second-person address is often unremarkable, arising naturally over the course of
mimetic dialogue. On occasion, however, drama can deploy the second person in a
manner that calls into question the configuration of mimetic speakers.
79
Diegetic poetry,
on the other hand, does not assume an interlocutor for its narrator. Use of the second
person is therefore always constitutive of a contextualization of the narrative voice that is
otherwise unarticulated within the poem, yet not all instances of second-person address
are equally powerful in this regard. The apostrophes of interest to us in exploring Pindar
and Aeschylus scriptory poetics are those which actively deploy internal dictional
structure of the trope to create a problematic or uncertain relationship between the
speaker and addressee. Often this manifests itself as an asymmetry or hierarchy between
speaker and addressee, much like the consistent dynamic that we found in Pindars and
Aeschylus use of oratio recta. Silence on the dramatic stage or the revelation of an
unexpected, or unexpectedly vivid, addressee in diegetic poetry create a destabilizing
effect that momentarily reconfigures the scene the poem has constructed for itself. Like
oratio recta, apostrophe not only momentarily reconfigures a given poems dictional
mode but restructures the established hic et nunc in which the poetic voices are located.
Where oratio recta turns our attention to the identity of the primary speaker, apostrophe
demands that we look beyond the voices that we hear to question what other silent figures
may be present in the poem.

A Second Person
Both apostrophe and oratio recta are tropes able to increase the number of figures within
the imagined world of a poems performance. Apostrophe does not, however, achieve
this end through vocal polyphony like oratio recta. Direct speech reduplicates a single
voice, splitting one speaker into two (or more) through embedded mimesis. Apostrophe,

79
In a recent article, G.O. Hutchinson has argued for the importance of attending to second-
person address when its force is more than merely conventional, even within dramatic texts.
Hutchinson (2010) p. 97. Hutchinson looks specifically to family reunions as moments in
which the second person is imbued with increased significance.
68
conversely, maintains the vocal unity of the primary speaker while creating for itself an
unlimited number of potential addressees. Whether or not the addressee is able to
respond, apostrophe results in the perception of a second person created by but also
participating in the discourse of the primary speaker. Through this power of external
generation, apostrophe fills the poetic stage be it literal or figurative with characters
whose un-heard voices could potentially meet the primary speaker with the same level of
verbal immediacy. Despite this inherent potential for speech in the hic et nunc, the silence
of these secondary voices means that their presence is, as in oratio recta, mediated by the
framing speaker. The addressee is embodied through the primary speakers exhortation
but, when no verbal response is offered, the dialogic partner remains contained within the
second person, embedded in the voice that invokes him. The result is a shadow-world of
voiceless figures who fill the performative hic et nunc created by the primary speakers
words.
The mimetic dialogue of Aeschylean tragedy employs the second person as its
standard means of establishing communication between mimetic figures onstage. When a
character addressed in the second person offers a verbal response, the basic structure of
mimetic dialogue is maintained. When, however, there is no response from the addressee,
the address unsettles the dialogic frame and is classed as apostrophe. A simple instance of
this type of confusion is found in the Agamemnon parodos, when the Chorus call out to
Clytemnestra in the final period of their opening anapaests:
,d 30, S?&3=8#:
;694-#8, F4,+"#14 !"?-41%A,-84,
-+ J80*'; -+ &0*&; -+ 3' ()41,;*%0&O 85
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-R& ;?%*>;$8*& "6)O' >80&4.

69
But you, daughter of Tyndareus, queen Clytemnestra, what is afoot? What is the
news? What have you learned putting faith in what message to send around
making burnt sacrifices?

Telling of these things whatever Right permits, be a cure for this concern which is
evil-minded at times, at others by the sacrifices you reveal becomes a hope that
fends off insatiate thoughts, the heart-wrenching feeling of pain.

The passage offers a compelling demonstration of the performative nature of the trope,
and more specifically, how the dramatic staging of Aeschylus poem is called into
question by the generative powers of apostrophe. Because Klytemnestra is a character in
the play, who will in fact soon add her voice to the polyphony of the stage, the Choruss
apostrophe to her at the beginning of the parodos will have a different effect depending
on whether or not Klytemnestra is physically present on the stage. In addition to raising
fascinating questions about Aeschylean dramaturgy, this ambiguity nicely points out how
apostrophe generates a kind of speech through silence. If, as is often asserted,
Clytemnestra is onstage at the time of the Choruss address despite the fact that her
entrance has not been formally introduced following standard tragic convention,
80

Clytemnestra stands as a possible mimetic interlocutor for the Chorus. The extended
address to Clytemnestra has a clear dialogic intent. The Chorus anticipate that
Clytemnestra will respond to the questions that they have posed ("0P4,' 97), that her
answer will have an immediate and positive effect on their understanding and disposition
()41c& -# 9#&*V 99). Their apostrophe to her would then represent one of the most
powerful elements grounding the Chorus to the hic et nunc of the staged action of the
play just before they engage in the chronological displacement of the Aulis narrative,
which follows immediately after the passage just quoted. At the same time,
Clytemnestras silence, and the Choruss indifference to it, create a barrier to dialogic
communication onstage, and an awareness of the lack of dialogue in the face of urgent
questions, that will persist until the end of the Choruss song, when they once again turn
their attention to the queen. If, on the other hand, Clytemnestra is not present to hear the
Choruss appeal, the seamless transition to the lyric narrative that follows signals that the

80
Although he does not hold to the position himself, Taplin rehearses the arguments in support of
Clytemnestras early entry. Taplin (1977) pp. 280-2 with bibliography.
70
Chorus do not in fact expect any response.
81
As the watchmans prayer to the gods with
which the play began resulted in the arrival of the beacon from Troy greeted with an
emphatic address ( J4K8# "4%)-R8 &?5-$', 5-". 22-4) so the Choruss prayer-like
call to Clytemnestra is able to summon the physical form of the queen, who will arrive
onstage at the end of the Choruss song.
Both of these dramatic possibilities are explored later in the play, when the
appearance of Cassandra unambiguously demonstrates a failed address between figures
onstage followed by repeated apostrophe to a figure who is not physically present within
the mimetic hic et nunc of the action. Clytemnestra is herself the source of the first
element through her refusal to comprehend or accept Cassandras silence in the face of
her commands. Although the Trojan captive had been present onstage since the entrance
of Agamemnon at line 783, it is only after the king has re-entered his palace more than
two-hundred lines later that Clytemnestra turns her attention to her husbands captive,
addressing the Trojan princess by name: #e,: 5*%+y*? 54W ,6, !4,,=&384& "09:
(1035). Cassandra does not respond, maintaining her silence until Clytemnestra herself
departs in a rage, unwilling to waste any more time addressing the girl in vain.
Throughout the episode Cassandras silence stands in marked contrast to Clytemnestras
increasingly frustrated attempts to establish communication with the girl.
82
In her
attempts to engage the silent princess, Clytemnestra seeks a reciprocal, if not
symmetrical, exchange with her addressee.
83
Instead Clytemnestra finds herself in a
triangulated conversation with the Chorus, who fill the silence where Cassandras

81
As argued by Fraenkel (1950) ad 83ff. This is also the considered position of Taplin, who
argues that Clytemnestra appears onstage between lines 255 to 258, with a slight preference for
258. Taplin (1977) p. 287, cf. pp. 282-8.
82
Thalmann offers an elegant assessment of Cassandras refusal to speak: Only one character in
the play can resist Clytemnestra, and that is Cassandra. Lines 1035-1071 represent a failed
persuasion-scene which contrasts with the successful one with Agamemnon. Cassandra meets
Clytemnestra's attempts to persuade her to enter the house [..] and characteristic verbal ironies
(e.g., 1055-1058) with silence. Whatever Cassandras motives contempt, indifference,
preoccupation with her suffering this silence is a brilliantly effective response. To try to resist
Clytemnestra on her own terms would be dangerous and probably futile; but silence, the apparent
absence of any response at all, is the one attitude that renders Clytemnestra's skill with language
impotent. Thalmann (1985) p. 228.
83
A fact reflected in the dialogic force of the negative condition #n %R 30Jb "$9*&, which, as
Fraenkel notes, retains the strong force of receiving the words of ones interlocutor, i.e.
attaching sense to sound. Likewise Goldhill stresses the importance of speech and communication
in this initial approach to Cassandra. Goldhill (1984) pp. 82-3.
71
response should be heard, re-enforcing and rearticulate Clytemnestras words,
84

producing a kind of echo chamber in place of a truly dialogic exchange.
Once Clytemnestra has left the stage, Cassandra begins to speak, but her words are
not addressed to the Chorus with whom she shares the hic et nunc. Throughout the
episode a rich and complex scene that we will revisit in the next chapter Cassandra
makes use of the second person to fill the stage with an alternate cast perceptible to her
alone. After her first dramatic apostrophes to Apollo are shouted out with complete
disregard for the Choruss incomprehension and rebukes,
85
Cassandra continues to fill the
stage in a dizzying dance across time and space, apostrophizing the future woes of the
house of Atreus and her own youthful haunts even as she maintains her imagined
exchange with Apollo
86
all the while leaving unanswered the confused Choruss
attempts to join her conversations. The power of apostrophe hinted at in the parodos is
now given full reign, unsettling the dialogic exchange between the characters onstage and
creating a separate communicative field that resists the parameters of the dramatic
mimesis. Like the Watchman and the Chorus before her, Cassandras mantic apostrophes
are also generative of dramatic action, predicting her own murder and that of
Agamemnon, but also the eventual arrival onstage of Apollo and the Furies.
87

It is worth noting briefly that the exploitation of Cassandras prophetic status to
facilitate this unsettling of the plays enunciative boundaries in time and space mirrors
that which we found in our earlier examination of oratio recta.
88
The thematic overlap is
significant. In the Cassandra-scene, as in other Aeschylean uses of apostrophe that
demonstrate an analogous ability to reconfigure the time-scape of the surrounding drama,
the temporal properties of mantic utterance are harnessed to place the marked second-
person address within a spatio-temporal sphere distinct from that of the primary dialogue.

84
Pillinger examines how the Chorus and Clytemnestra are oddly aligned in this initial attempt to
engage Cassandra. Pillinger (2009) pp. 24-5.
85
Goldhill (1984) p. 83.
86
Lines 1107, 1138-9, and 1156-9.
87
The Chorus understand this latter component clearly: )*+4& 81&d& -A&3# 3c%4,1& 50"b
()*8;1=y#1&; (1119). On the important connections between Cassandras exchange with the (as
yet) unseen Apollo, see Knox (1972) esp. p. 111. On the presence of the Furies, Prins (1991) p.
178, Frontisi-Ducroux (2007).
88
Athanassaki singles out Cassandras speech in the Agamemnon as encapsulating the essential
features of mantic discourse which she traces in Pindars embedded speech. Athanassaki (1990)
p. 95.
72
Corresponding to the spatio-temporal transgressions of embedded mantic utterances, the
mantic apostrophe moves across the dramas unseen boundaries and produces
anachronistic dialogues that fill the stage with specters of voices past and future.
Since Pindars poems do not contain the dialogic exchanges that form the heart of
tragic drama, it is perhaps all the more surprising that we find the melic poet making
regular use of apostrophe to non-divine figures.
89
Within epinician, the apostrophizing of
laudandi seems to have been an established, though not necessary, component of
composition.
90
But despite its somewhat standardized form, Pindars second-person
addresses to his victors retain a strong deictic force, locating the diegetic narrator within a
temporally and geographically circumscribed communicative event.
91
Moreover, unlike
his contemporary Bacchylides, Pindar at times supplements or displaces the laudandus of
an epinician by apostrophizing other figures in the second person, thus expanding the
simulated conversation to include figures whose real or imagined presence is not required
by generic conventions.
92
These apostrophes can be addressed to named or unnamed
attendants of uncertain status, to geographic locations, or to inanimate objects of various
kinds.
93
One consistent feature of these varied objects of apostrophe is that they are asked

89
Apostrophes to gods, in the form of prayer, are standard in all forms of lyric poetry.
90
Pindar apostrophizes the laudandus by name in 20 of his extant epinicians: O.1.107; 5.21, 23;
6.12, 77, 81; 10.92-3; 11.11-12; 12.13, 18-9; 13.14, 43; P.2.18-20; 3.80; 4.250, 298; 5.5-11, 14-
22, 31; 7.17; 8.33, 80-1; 9.100; N.1.28; 2.14-5; 5.43; 6.60-2; I.4.2-3; 5.17-8. In addition, there are
8 apostrophes to an unnamed addressee that seem to designate the laudandus, bringing the total
number of odes apostrophizing the victor to 23: O.1.114-5; P.1.86-92; 2.57-72; 3.84; 4.255, 259,
263, 270; 8.35-8; N.3.75, 83; 4.49, 80, 90. Bacchylides apostrophizes the laudandus in 4 of 14:
3.64, 92; 6.12-3, 16; 9.81-2; 13. 67-70.
91
The possibility for non-correspondence between the scene described within the poem and the
external circumstances of performance is discussed in the next chapter.
92
The one Bacchylidean exception is 13.190 where the poet apostrophizes a non-descript group
of young men whom he calls on to aid in his song: &+54& -.(815?304 %0")#-., &0*1. Cf. Pindar
I.8.1.
93
Apostrophes to named figures, not the laudandus: O.6.22, 6.88; P.5.45-54; 6.15-20; 8.72;
N.2.24-5; 5.41-2; 7.58; 8.44; I.2.1, 31; 2.47-8 ()*"+-41); 7.31-4; 8.1 (&0*1); Pa.6.121-2 (&0*1);
Pa.8.1 (seers); fr.122.1-7 (young girls); Apostrophes to unnamed figures, not the laudandus:
O.1.18; 8.92 (Zeus?); 9.6-16, 40-1, 47-8, 54; 10.1-2; P.4.277-8; 6.1; 10.51-2; 11.38; N.1.13; 3.9-
11 (Muse?); 4.36-7; 5.48-9 (unclear if to City or the laudandus); 5.50-4; 7.77, 80-1; 9.34-7;
10.21; I.2.12; 3.15; 4.35; 5.24, 38-42, 51, 62-3; 7.20 (Thebes?); 8.7, 62; fr. 43?, Pa.7b.2; Pa.21.1-
2; fr94b.76-7; fr.107ab; fr. 180; fr.188; fr.194; fr.215a. To places: O.5.4; 8.1-2; 9.17; P.2.1-3;
8.98; 12.1-5; N.1.1-5; 7.50; I.1.1-2, 6; 7.1-15; fr.33c; Pa.6.1-6, 10-11, 124-30, 132; fr.76; fr.96
(Sirios); fr.195. To body parts or inanimate objects: O.1.4-5; 2.1, 89; P.1.1-10; 3.61-2; N.3.26-8;
4.44; 5.3; fr.123.1; fr.127.3-4.
73
to participate in the composition or performance of the poem in which they are addressed.
The apostrophized figures are thereby incorporated into the discourse of the poem, and
while they are never endowed with a mimetic voice of their own (as are the characters of
the dramatic stage), they can be understood to tacitly participate in a continued
performance of the poem. At these moments, the diegetic diction of Pindars poems
shades into a mimetic mode, surrounding the primary speaker with a cast of potential
interlocutors with whom his narration might but never does translate into dramatic
dialogue. The same approach to apostrophe is found in Pindars non-epinician poems,
where his use of the second person spans a similar range of addressees, from gods and the
Muses, to mythic figures, collaborators named and unnamed, and his poetic patrons, be
they men or cities.
Olympian 6 again presents a remarkably rich picture of how these varied apostrophes
can function within Pindars principally diegetic poetry. In addition to apostrophizing the
victor, Hagesias, by name or patronymic on three separate occasions (12, 77, 80), the
poem directs apostrophes to two additional named persons, Phintis and Aeneas, who
become something like characters on Pindars poetic stage (22, 88-93). The scholia
respectively identify these men as Hagesias charioteer and Pindars assistant.
94
These
biographical assertions have drawn little skepticism from modern scholars despite the
manifest lack of evidence in their support.
95
Pindar himself offers no information about
the men apart from their names, but they are both explicitly drawn into collaboration with
the poet. Phintis is called upon as the poet prepares to travel into the mythical space of
the Iamos narrative to yoke the poets chariot of song (22-5):
+&-1', @""7 y#VP*& ^3O %*1 ,;0&*' Y%1$&:&,
-=J*', >84 5#"#6;L -' (& 54;48
F=,*%#& 5J*&, o5:%4+ -# )8E' @&38D&
54W 90&*'. 25

Phintis, yoke for me now the strength of mules, quickly as possible, that we may
ride our chariot along the clear path, and I may arrive at the ancestry of these
men.


94
Olympian 6, 37c +&-1': *-*' : Y&+*J*' -{' @)A&O'. 148a -8?&*& &V& j-4+8*?',
n&04: @)*,-80)#1 -E& "$9*& )8E' n&04& -E& J*8*313=,54"*&.
95
See, for example, the commentary of Hutchinson (2001) pp. 385-6, 414-5.
74
The structure of the address establishes Phintis as an aid to the poet. He is a silent
interlocutor, whose attendance and participation is nevertheless needed for the poets
compositional journey to continue.
Aeneas too is a collaborator of the poet, named only in relation to the discursive
frame established by the poets second-person address: -8?&*& &V& j-4+8*?', /n&04,
)8D-*& %C& 84& s48;#&+4& 5#"43{,41. Now rouse your companions, o Aeneas,
first to call out in celebration of Hera Parthenia (87-8). But unlike Phintis, Aeneas role
is not simply to attend the poet in silence. Rather, he is called upon to join in an unheard
harmony guiding the voices of his companions. The complex figuration of Aeneas silent
song is developed as the extended apostrophe progresses:
(,,W 978 [99#"*' /8;$',
5$%:& ,5?-="4 |*1,<&, 9"?5d' 584-R8 @94>;095-:& @*13<&
#i)*& 3C %#%&<,;41 u?845*,,<& -# 54W T8-?9+4'

For you are a faithful messenger, the dispatch of the fair-haired Muses, a sweet
mixing-bowl of loud-sounding songs. Tell them to remember Syracuse and
Ortygia.

How are we to understand the nature of the song that Pindar calls on Aeneas and his
companions to perform? In one sense the apostrophe anticipates a vocal event, outside of
the poets discursive field, in which Aeneas will fulfill the command and in turn engage
his comrades in song. Yet, as Hutchinson notes, the poets instructions are also already
fulfilled in the act of uttering them, for the poets speech performs the very function
that it demands of its addressee.
96
Pindars voice is fused with that of the silent Aeneas in
the single apostrophic enunciation which contains both call and response. A polyphony of
dialogue is reproduced in the isolated voice of the poets apostrophic address. This vocal
redoubling results in an unsettling of the spatio-temporal reality of the poetic
performance, setting the poets own voice against an imagined future performance by
Aeneas and his companions which vitiates the need for the poets presence. The spatio-
temporal friction of the paradoxical address is borne most heavily by the poet himself.
The uncertain status of his apostrophe fractures the coherence of Pindars own hic et
nunc, casting doubt over where he stands in relation to the scene that he has created

96
Hutchinson (2001) p. 415.
75
around him.
To anticipate somewhat the arguments that will be made in the next chapter, we
should also note that the highly metaphoric language that echoes and intensifies the
temporal complexities of the apostrophe are bound up with the dynamics of scriptory
performance (89-91). Pindar identifies Aeneas in three distinct ways: first in the
relatively unproblematic guise of an angelos orthos, and then metaphorically as the
ukomn skutala Moisan and glukus kratr agaphthenktn aoidan. In the first of these
metaphoric figurations the living Aeneas is described through the attributes of the
inanimate written text; he is a messenger but he is also the message itself (,5?-="4), the
physical embodiment of the song in its graphic state.
97
At the same time, the poet invokes
his role as the vessel (584-R8) in which the songs sound (@94>;095-:& @*13<&) will
be (re)generated.
98
Like the poem itself, Aeneas is a hybrid, representing the work both as
material text and as oral performance.

Extending the Frame
As we have already noted, there are clear points of overlap between the use of apostrophe
and oratio recta in Pindar and Aeschylus. Both tropes are pointed ways in which the
dictional mode predominant within the poem is disrupted by the introduction of a voice
or character who transgresses the established structure of vocal expression. The two
tropes are twinned not only in their special ability to unsettle the primary dictional mode
of a given poem, but also in their capacity to turn this momentary interruption into a
broader meditation on the parameters and characteristics of poetic voice. It is therefore
unsurprising that our poets often deploy oratio recta and apostrophe in concert. By
combining the destabilizing features of both tropes in hybrid form, the poets can explore
a broader range of dictional possibilities. When used in close proximity, the two tropes
not only re-enforce each other but create a nexus of vocal disjunction that opens a

97
Hubbard (2004) p. 89. See also West (1988). For a more detailed historical treatment of the
fifth-century use of the ,5?-="O, see Kelly (1986).
98
Hutchinson (2001) p. 417 notes that @94>;095-:& @*13<& now stresses the audible
performance of the poem in contrast to the ,5?-="4, a striking word [that] clashes effectively
with those around it [and] must [] carry some idea of the Spartan device [for written
communication].
76
window onto the broader issues at the heart of how scriptory poetics restructures the basic
characteristics of poetic voice and performance.
For Aeschylus, whose speakers in direct speech are already potential interlocutors for
their framing voices, the marriage of oratio recta and apostrophe collapses further the
distinction between enunciative fields while at the same time bringing their divergence
into greater relief. The juxtaposition of the two tropes is deployed to powerful effect in
the Agamemnon parodos through a subtle interweaving of the elements that we have
examined separately above. The invocation of Clytemnestra at line 83 is positioned in the
anapaestic introduction so as to stand as a foil for the embedded speech of Calchas whom
the Chorus soon after impersonate. Not only are the two non-primary enunciative figures
linked by their proximity within the Choruss speech, they are interwoven through the
figure of Apollo, Paian, with whom the voice of each is intimately identified. Calchas
embedded speech finds its truest performative power in the seers invocation of Apollo
Paian. The force of Calchas invocation of Apollo through his generically and ritually
charged name stands in contrast to the Choruss own ritual refrain and highlights the
power that the seers voice has attained within the Choruss song. Through his appeal to
Apollo, Calchas wrests control of the hic et nunc from the Chorus, performing his own
song within the frame of the Choruss impersonation. The language of this charged
moment within the oratio recta resonates with that used by the Chorus in their apostrophe
to Clytemnestra, when they state that in granting a response she would become for them
pain that is, that her speech, if articulated, would share with Calchas the performative
hic et nunc of his apotropaic prayer to Apollo. The apostrophe to Clytemnestra is coded
with the same performative language of Calchas embedded speech, establishing a bridge
between the two characters, both of whom are made present through the mediation of the
Chorus.
When Clytemnestra makes her true verbal entrance at the end of the parodos, she is
once again introduced by an address of the Chorus:
5: ,#F+y:& ,$&, !"?-41%A,-84, 58=-*'
3+5O 9=8 (,-1 >:-E' @8JO9*V -+#1&
9?&4K5' (8O%:;0&-*' [8,#&*' ;8$&*?. 260
,d 3' #e -1 5#3&E& #e-# %R )#)?,%0&O
#I4990"*1,1& (")+,1& ;?O)*"#K',
77
5"6*1%' & #}>8:& *I3C ,19c,b >;$&*'.

I come reverencing your power, Clytemnestra. For it is just to honor the wife of
the leader when that mans throne is left vacant. And if you have learned anything
faithful or not so that you offer sacrifice with hopes of good-report, I will hear
you gladly, do not keep a grudging silence.

The Choruss words echo the language of the Aulis narrative. Their appeal to her kratos
recalls the kratos of the Argives which they claimed themselves to be authorized to
recount (104) and, more pointedly, their desire to hear a faithful report from her (-1
5#3&E&) echoes their earlier characterization of Calchas as the kednos stratomantis of the
expedition (123). The verbal attributes shared by Chorus and seer are now assigned to
Clytemnestra, who will soon fill the stage with tales of her own non-verbal means of
communication through the beacon fires.
99
The Chorus also rephrase their earlier
apostrophe, renewing their expression of curiosity over Clytemnestras sacrifices: -+&*'
@99#"+4' / )#1;*K )#8+)#%)-4 ;?*,5#K'; (86-7) ! #I4990"*1,1& (")+,1& ;?O)*"#K'
(262) And in their eagerness to induce Clytemnestra to speak, the potential silence that
they urge the queen to renounce renews the prospect of a non-response to which their
earlier address succumbed. Clytemnestras reply, full of unknown guile and cunning
dissimulation, represents the plays first foray into true mimetic dialogue.
The artful interweaving of Clytemnestras unheard voice into the verbal tapestry of
the parodos endows her ultimate appearance onstage with a greater weight than it might
otherwise possess. Through her further appropriation of the Watchmans introductory
speech in her aphoristic language (#I=99#"*' %0&, Z,)#8 Y )48*1%+4, / f:' 90&*1-*
%O-8E' #I>8$&O' )=84. 265-6) she seems to have been present from the plays outset
(as she will remain a presence throughout the play, even when she has exited the
stage).
100
Clytemnestra is first embodied through the Choruss apostrophe and only later
by her own physical and verbal presence on the stage. A similar effect is produced by the
subsequent arrival of Agamemnon returned from Troy. Following the model of
Clytemnestra, Agamemnon emerges from his embedded impersonation by the Chorus

99
Goldhill (1984) p. 38, Longo (1976).
100
Gthe notes, quoted by Fraenkel (1937) p. 1, da jede Person, auer Clytemnestra, der
Unheilverketterin, ihre abgeschlossene Aristeia hat, so da jede ein ganzes Gedicht spielt und
nachher nicht wiederkommt.
78
and arrives in three-dimensions at center stage. His visible presence marks the final
transfer of the Choruss retrospective lyric narrative into the hic et nunc of the dramatic
sphere, and with it the past action of the play comes fully into the present. The
juxtaposition of Agamemnons two forms and two voices has often gone unremarked, but
it is of central significance for understanding how the dictional models explored in the
lyrics of the parodos inform the dramatic action that follows. As Gregory Hutchinson has
remarked in a description of the Redepaare in the Seven Against Thebes that is no less
relevant to the Agamemnon: the [early dramatic] poets are not indifferent to the
distinction between what is seen onstage and what is reported from another place or time.
It is this distinction that they wish to exploit.
101
Through the play of apostrophe
Clytemnestra, the Unheilverketterin, has laid the ground for her husbands dynamic
transgression of poetic time and space. By placing the luxurious tapestries before him,
her empowered speech invites him to reenact before our eyes the sacrilege of which the
parodos has already shown him guilty.
102
The dialogue between the two engages in a
twofold re-enactment through which the temporal extension of the play itself is enfolded
within the chronology of the narrative events; Agamemnon finds himself repeating the
error that he made in Aulis, both ten years and 600 lines earlier.
The comparative brevity of his compositions means that Pindar cannot not achieve
the same extended interplay of apostrophe and oratio recta that Aeschylus can produce
over the course of a play or trilogy. But Pindar also makes regular use of the
complementary nature of apostrophe and oratio recta to heighten the complexity of the
dictional register. On occasion Pindar employs the Homeric practice of apostrophizing
the embedded figures of mythical narratives, though rarely in combination with direct
speech.
103
More frequently he makes use of apostrophe in close proximity to mythical

101
Hutchinson (1985) p. 103.
102
Lebeck (1971) p. 76.
103
Apostrophes to figures within the mythic frame are found at O.1.36, 45, 51, P.4.59, 175; I.6.19
(anticipated); I.8.21 (anticipated), Pa.2.1-4, 104-5; fr.81. On P.4.59, see above p. 63. One striking
example of apostrophe within a speech in oratio recta is found at P.4.89, where the unidentified
speaker engages in a brief mythical narrative about Iphimedeias sons, addressing one (Ephialtes)
in the second person: (& 3C =PL >4&-W ;4&#K& "1)48 >1%#3#+4' )4K34', -*& 54W ,0,
-*"%=#1' )1="-4 [&4P. Interestingly, this type of spatio-temporally discordant embedded
apostrophe is also found once in Bacchylides, whose narrative style tends in general to be more
Homeric than that of Pindar, on which see Fearn (forthcoming). The apostrophe is found in
79
episodes in a way that encourages comparison and connection between them, often using
apostrophes to more clearly designate the boundaries of these narrative interludes. When
the mythical narrative includes oratio recta, the invocation of a second-person addressee
strongly juxtaposes the two aberrant dictional modes, creating a higher degree of
enunciative instability than either trope would produce on its own.
The multiple figures of apostrophe in Olympian 6 are deployed in just this fashion in
relation to the poems two embedded speakers. The brief narrative focusing on Adrastus
speech to Amphiaraos which, like all Pindaric oratio recta, internally models the posture
of unreciprocated address, is framed by apostrophes at its beginning and end. The
opening apostrophe is to the laudandus, Hagesias, who is invoked in the second person as
the object of Pindars own desire for communication: h9O,+4, -W& 3 4i&*' j-*K%*', k&
(&3+54' @)E 9"c,,4' l384,-*' (12-3). The fusion of the poets framing voice with
that of his embedded speaker is doubled through the apostrophe by an analogous
integration of his second-person addressee. But the silent Hagesias remains fixed within
the frame, pulling the poet back into his immediate poetic scene even as the embedded
myth enters into the hic et nunc through direct speech.
At the conclusion of the mythic narrative, after he has reasserted his narrative control
with the bold claim to serve as future witness to Hagesias virtue, Pindar turns to another
second person, his helper Phintis, to allow him to continue along his poetic path. The
apostrophe to Phintis serves a transitional function, marking the conclusion of the
Adrastus narrative and the start of the genealogy of Iamos. In such close proximity to the
Hagesias apostrophe and subsequent direct speech of Adrastus, the address to Phintis
brings the crowded enunciative field of the poem into view. There will be some delay
before Apollos oratio recta, and the two voices will not find themselves in such close
proximity, but with a second apostrophe to Hagesias and a further one to Aeneas
following the close of the second narrative, the same pattern of polyphonous
interweaving of frame and embedded myth will again come into view. Phintis, who has

Bacchylides eleventh epinician ode, where Artemis is the object of an extended second-person
address following on the heels of an account of her aid in the foundation of Metapontion. The
second person bridges the gap between mythical past and the hic et nunc of the ode, which
concludes soon after. There is, however, no oratio recta in the mythical narrative proper. On the
play of voice in the ode, see Calame (2000), Currie (2010).
80
traveled with Pindar through the time and space of myth, now finds himself joined (or has
he been replaced?) on the poets stage by Aeneas and his companions, whose own
unheard melodies spin the poet out into an unseen future.
The over-population of Pindars cast of interlocutors stands in contrast to their
uniform silence, which is all the more strikingly felt in contrast to Apollos prophetic
interruption at the close of the myth, which has brought him even more firmly into the hic
et nunc than any of these second persons. The ever changing objects of Pindars direct
address affect the poets voice as well, for although each instance of apostrophe serves to
fix the poet in a hic et nunc appropriate to his poetic task, the combination of addresses
dilutes his temporal and spatial location. The unmooring of the poets voice from a
discernable hic et nunc is further effected by the singular indexical grounding of Apollos
voice, which planted itself so firmly within the ground of the mythical tale as to overrun
its boundaries. Apollos words, ringing out from the ancient banks of the Alpheos, were
themselves sufficient to create movement in those around him, not just his embedded
addressee, but the poet as well. Now, returned to the poets frame we find that the
dictional foundations have themselves become unstable.
81
CHAPTER 2 A VOICE FROM THE PAST

In the last chapter we explored how Pindar and Aeschylus exploit the dictional properties
inherent to oratio recta and apostrophe in order to expand and to recalibrate their poems
spatio-temporal dynamics. Now we must ask why this happens in the first place; what
motivates our poets to activate this interface of complex and contradictory dictional
modes within their compositions? To answer this question we must move into the world
beyond the texts themselves to take account of the historical environment in which Pindar
and Aeschylus were producing their dictionally mobile compositions. For the question of
how and why these shifting voices underpin Pindars and Aeschylus scriptory poetics is
deeply linked to the conditions for poetic production and performance in the first half of
the fifth century.
In this chapter we will examine how the increasingly regular reperformance of
Pindars and Aeschylus poetry contributed a new urgency to their contemplation of the
scriptory nature of their compositions. In particular, we will see how the emerging
importance of written texts allowed for a distinction between the act of composition and
performance that laid the foundation for these poets notion of scriptory poetics. After an
initial examination of the historical conditions that ushered in these conceptual
developments, we will explore how our poets turned to other types of poetry most
prominently Homeric epic to find models for their new idea of poetry. We will see that
the hypersensitivity to dictional modes to the question of voice in poetry reflected in
Pindars and Aeschylus pointed use of apostrophe and oratio recta is tied up with
thoughts about reperformance, most often imagined through a Homeric lens. And finally,
we will examine how our poets re-imagined Homer in ways that suited their own poetic
purposes as they grappled with the idea that their compositions were not simply
increasingly reliant on scripts but were, in fact, scriptory in their very nature.

1. THE POET SINGS AGAIN
The radical reconfiguration of poetic outlook that I believe Pindar and Aeschylus to have
undertaken in their compositions was not the result of any single transformative event but
82
of a confluence of factors new and old that brought long simmering reflections to a
critical point. Our poets were influenced by circumstances resulting from the explosive
spread of non-poetic writing practices in the latter part of the sixth century as well as by
prose writers of the period, whose treatises had an important impact on fifth-century
prose and most likely our poets too.
1
But the most significant shifts were those that took
place within the ambit of melic poetry itself.
Until recently, the fifth-century performance of Pindars and Aeschylus poems was
widely considered to be occasional in nature. The authors composed their poems with an
eye to a single performance, the context of which it was claimed was the primary
determinant of the poems content and tone, be it a single years celebration of the Great
Dionysia, the triumphal return of an athletic victor, or the celebration of a particular
marriage or religious festival. Were this in fact the case, the question of whether Pindar
and Aeschylus committed their poems to writing would have little bearing on the poets
idea of his work, since poetry composed for a single performance occasion would retain
nearly all of the essential properties of oral composition even if written technology were
employed at some stage.
2
It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that neither Pindar
nor Aeschylus was likely to have expected his poems to be performed only once (or only
one time that really mattered) and it is worth pausing for a moment to properly appreciate
how widespread and predictable the practice of repeat performance had grown by the first
half of the fifth century. Of course, reperformance does not prove the use of writing, but
it is difficult to imagine the kind of practice we now understand to have been in place at
the time to have developed without the aid of writing.
3
But our concern is less for the
mechanics of reperformance than for the impact it had on our poets as they began to
consider the many future iterations of their poems that reperformance would entail.
Evidence for the reperformance of tragedy, which is far more plentiful than that for
other melic forms, has recently become the object of serious scholarly consideration and

1
For a more detailed discussion of these conditions, see above pp. 9-14.
2
Such poetry would stand closer to transcript than script, following Nagys model.
Composition before the event would preclude true oral composition (that is, composition
simultaneous with performance), but the occasional poems would nevertheless retain a vestige of
the basic unity of composition and performance as a result of being designed for a single
performance context.
3
Herington (1985) chap. 2, Hubbard (2004) pp. 80-93.
83
the latest analyses have revealed a remarkably rich, heterodox landscape of the early
Nachleben of fifth-century dramatic texts. In the last decade, our understanding of ancient
drama has undergone fundamental shifts following Oliver Taplins ground-breaking
demonstration that there was regular reperformance of Athenian tragedy both across the
Attic peninsula and throughout the Mediterranean by at least the beginning of the fourth
century BC.
4
More recently, scholars such as Eric Csapo have uncovered a history of
dramatic reperformance that was underway significantly earlier. Claims of dramatic
reperformance within the fifth century represent a radical departure from the established
scholarly position since such a practice would represent reperformance that was foreseen
(and even intended) by the playwright. That there is still some skepticism surrounding
such claims is likely a result of what Csapo aptly identifies as the romantic notion, still
dear to classical scholarship, that all the expense and labor that went into the production
of an ancient drama was sacrifice designed for a single immolation a potlatch for the
god Dionysus and the glory of Athens.
5
However, we can now conclusively demonstrate
that tragedies were being reperformed by the middle of the fifth century and, although
there is no uncontested proof that this practice was already in place by the end of the
sixth century, the circumstantial evidence in support of an earlier date, when taken all
together, is undeniably compelling.
6

In Attica, the institution of the Rural Dionysia, though not well understood, seems to
have provided a platform for reproduction of tragedy throughout the demes in the winter
months. Inscriptional evidence dates such reperformance to the middle of the fifth
century,
7
but construction of deme theaters emerges somewhat earlier, with
archaeological evidence from the earliest construction at Thorikos dating to the end of the

4
Taplin (1999), Taplin (2007) pp. 6-7. See also Wilson (2007b), Easterling (2005), Duncan
(2005).
5
Csapo (2010) p. 84.
6
As Csapo asserts, we have by c. 440 BC certain evidence for five regular festivals where
dramatic performances took place, and certain to possible evidence for fourteen. [] There is
every reason to believe that these numbers represent only the view of the tip of the iceberg
permitted by the random and fortuitous survival of the evidence. p. 103.
7
Paga (2010) p. 357, Csapo (2010) pp. 92-4, Whitehead (1986) pp. 215-6. As Csapo notes, the
naming of Sophocles and Aristophanes as didaskaloi in IG I
3
970 perhaps suggests that the
playwrights were in fact present at these local reperformances of their works.
84
sixth century.
8
The construction of theaters does not prove tragic performance,
9
but it
provides a strong indication that the popularity of the relatively new genre resulted in
reperformances outside of the annual celebration of the Great Dionysia at Athens.
Support for the inference that these theaters are a signal of repeat performance can be
found in the anecdotal account of the negative reception of Phrynichus Sack of Miletus.
According to Herodotus, the staging of the play soon after the citys defeat in 494 was so
disturbing to the Athenian audience that the demos not only fined the playwright but
banned the tragedy from further reperformance (54W ()0-4P4& %O50-1 %O30&4 J8<,;41
-*6-L - 38=%4-1. 6.21.13-14). That there was need for an explicit prohibition in the
unusual case of Phrynichus play signals that the reperformance of tragedies staged at the
Great Dionysia was a natural expectation for the successful playwright even in the first
decades of the fifth century.
Nor was the reperformance of tragedy limited to the Attic peninsula. From its earliest
instantiations, the broad popularity of tragedy is evidenced by the eager reception of the
new dramatic form throughout the Greek Mediterranean. Athenian tragedy was especially
beloved in Southern Italy and Sicily, where scenes from tragic dramas had become
regular subjects for vase painters from at least the beginning of the fourth century.
10

There is, however, compelling evidence that the regions appreciation for the genre
developed significantly earlier. In Sicily, we can point to a number of literary sources that
report on the early success of tragedy amongst the islands Greek-speaking communities.
Sicily had its own local tradition of dramatic mime that coincided with, and may have
pre-dated, the arrival of Attic tragedy,
11
a fact which most likely contributed to the rapid
and enthusiastic acceptance of Athenian tragedy in the region. In particular Hieron of
Syracuse, a great patron of poetry in all its forms,
12
is said to have contracted Aeschylus

8
Paga (2010) p. 355 (with bibliography).
9
Csapo (2010) p. 96. While it is possible that the deme theaters exclusively hosted non-dramatic
melic performances, such as dithyrambs, or even rhapsodic performances of epic poems. Given
that we have little evidence whatsoever concerning the performance of either dramatic or non-
dramatic poetry, and that the few inscriptions which we do possess include mention of dramatic
performance, any claims that the performances were restricted to a certain type of performance
are pure speculation.
10
Taplin (2007) pp. 8-21.
11
Handley (1985), Wilson (2007a), Willi (2008) pp. 162-7.
12
Podelecki (1980) pp. 387-95, Herington (1986) p. 29, Dougherty (1993) pp. 83-102.
85
for a reperformance of his Persians and to have commissioned a play, the Aitnaeae, in
celebration of the citys re-founding. Whether or not these events in fact took place as
related by the notoriously unreliable biographical tradition,
13
we can understand the
narratives as a clear reflection of the enormous success of Aeschylean tragedies at the
Syracusan court. As the fact of the Aetnaeae composition makes clear, some exportation
of tragedy from Athens to Syracuse took place during Aeschylus lifetime and it is
unlikely that such an event would have occurred in a vacuum. Rather, it would seem to
point to a more widespread circulation and reperformance of tragic compositions, one of
which Aeschylus was himself well aware.
Although we know that tragedies were being performed in Hierons court from the
beginning of the fifth century, there is no firm archeological evidence for a theater
construction in Syracuse before the late fifth century. This lack of evidence reflects a
common pattern of permanent structures lagging well behind the institution of dramatic
performance,
14
but it is also further confirmation, if any were needed, of how easily the
deficiencies of historical evidence can skew our perceptions of performance history. In
Syracuse, we can rely on the wealth of literary testimonials to piece together a rich poetic
culture where the archaeological record remains inconclusive. In Metapontum and Elea,
by contrast, we find archaeological evidence suggesting sixth-century theater
constructions,
15
but we can only hazard theories as to what type of performances were
staged there; within this hypothetical realm it is as plausible to posit the (re)performance
of tragedies as it is to assert the opposite. We know that these areas of Magna Grecia
were commissioning work from other pan-Hellenic poets during the early fifth century,
16

and there is no reason to assume that these song-loving populations were any less
interested in tragic drama than their Sicilian neighbors.

13
On the ancient biographical tradition, see Fairweather (1984), Lefkowitz (1981), Graziosi
(2002).
14
This was certainly the case in Rome, where the established tradition of dramatic performance
long precedes the construction of a permanent theater. Goldberg (1996) esp. pp. 267-9.
15
Csapo suggests that the southern-Italian version of the Melanippe myth in Euripides Captive
Melanippe may indicate that the play was written with production in Herakleia or Metapontum
in mind. Csapo (2010) p. 98.
16
E.g. Bacch. 9, Pindar O.10 and 11.
86
Evidence for fifth-century tragic performances throughout the rest of the Greek
Mediterranean is sparse, offering little in the way of evidence apart from what we know
of the fifth-century theater constructions at Argos, Dion, and possibly Chaeroneia.
17

However, we must beware of treating evidence from this period as decisive. The lacunose
and unrepresentative picture from Magna Grecia, where theaters exist without a record of
performance and performances are recorded where no theater construction can be found,
should serve as a warning against drawing either positive or negative conclusions on the
basis of what scraps of evidence have come down to us from the period. The gaps in our
knowledge are so great that, as Csapo warns, the random and fortuitous record that we
now possess cannot reasonably be treated as data in any meaningful sense.
18
If we rely
on the meager information that is available, we are likely to construct for ourselves an
account that is distorted by millennia of attrition. What is more, we should be especially
skeptical of our own, emphatically Athenocentric account of tragedy in the fifth century
when, as Johanna Hanink has recently shown, this perspective is colored to a remarkable
degree by fourth-century Athenian political narratives which sought to reclaim Athens
past glory through the rhetorical repatriation of the citys dramatic legacy.
19

Like his dramatic counterpart, Pindar was until quite recently thought to have
composed for one-off performance and the occasional nature of his compositions was
considered beyond doubt. Compared with the relatively rich record of dramatic
production in the fifth century, we have no explicit evidence of Pindaric performance,
either in the original context or on later occasions, before the end of the fifth century.
Based on the broad fame that Pindars poetry had achieved within a few decades of its
initial composition, it seems most likely that reperformance occurred regularly across a
wide range of locations,
20
and in recent years a number of scholars have suggested a
wealth of possible contexts for reperformance.
21
But although reperformance cannot be
positively adduced in the case of Pindar, his poetry itself furnishes us with a rich store of

17
Csapo (2010) p. 99, with bibliography p. 114.
18
Csapo (2010) p. 103, see n. 17 above.
19
Hanink (2010).
20
The claim first made by Herington (1985) pp. 48-50, has in the wake of Morgan (1993) been
taken up by numerous scholars.
21
Hubbard (2004) pp. 71-2, Loscalzo (2003) pp. 96-119, Currie (2004) and Morrison (2007) pp.
15-23. For Paeans, see Rutherford (2001) pp. 175-78.
87
evidence which illuminates how the idea of reperformance was entering into the poets
vision.
As Kathryn Morgan demonstrated in a groundbreaking article whose full impact is
still being absorbed nearly twenty years after its publication, the undeniable ambiguity of
Pindars poems as regards their own performance (fuel for many decades of heated
debate on the subject) is in fact a reflection of and a strategy for the multiple audiences
and contexts in which the poet imagined his works would be performed.
22
Before
Morgans intervention, the desire to treat Pindars compositions as intended for a single,
unrepeatable performance had been the cause of much scholarly to-ing and fro-ing, first
to determine the exact location and circumstances of that performance,
23
and later in an
attempt to reduce the many inconsistencies and paradoxes of Pindars poetry to conform
to a single, historical moment.
24
But Morgans model of a multiplicity of perspectives
within a single poem showed these oppositions to be a red herring. With the poets own
eye trained on a variety of possible performance contexts, one should not expect his
compositions to reflect a single vision of song. Thus it is possible to understand the
seeming inconsistencies in Pindars diction as a result of his multiple, and often
contradictory, expectations for the many reperformances of his songs: the temporal
confusion produced by Pindars use of the future tense to point to an event that seems
already to be taking place in the performative present can be attributed to the poets
anticipation of the continued reperformance of his song; the difficulty of determining

22
Morgan (1993) esp. pp. 11-3.
23
The biographical approach of Wilamowitz being the most notable model, but also as a result of
the more recent interest in the odes political influences, exemplified, in extreme form, by the
work of Pfeijffer (1999c).
24
One paradigmatic example is the debate over Pindars problematic use of the future tense to
refer to the performance of his own compositions. In an attempt to reconcile the gesture to an
understanding of Pindars poetry as occasional in nature, Bundy declared that the poet made use
of the so-called encomiastic future which, he claimed, was not a future at all; Bundy (1962) pp.
21-2. So critical was the resolution of this problematic temporal perspective that new
interpretations were still being ventured nearly than half a century later: Slater (1969), Cerri
(1996), Pfeijffer (1999b). Even more vehement has been the quest to determine a fixed, uniform
identity for the narrative voice (the persona loquens) of Pindars poems, which has been the
subject of vigorous back and forth since the seminal article of Lefkowitz (1963); a collection of
her articles on the first person in Pindar was published as Lefkowitz (1991). Contrasting views
have been put forth by Felson Rubin (1984), D'Alessio (1994), Anzai (1994). A related debate
has raged over whether the performance of Pindars poems was choral or monodic, Heath (1988),
Carey (1991).
88
whether Pindars compositions were intended for performance by a chorus or a monodic
singer is shown to be a non-issue as both types can be included in the poets broad vision
of poetic reperformance; the debates surrounding the location of performance are
rendered moot, because no one place was imagined to be the single site of performance.
As Andrew Morrison quite succinctly asserts, Pindars poems are not, and were never
meant to be, one-off, never-to-be-repeated shows. The premiere is not the only
performance that matters, nor is its audience the only relevant one.
25

Further, not only are the many paradoxes presented by Pindars texts resolvable in
light of multiple performance contexts, these paradoxes can be understood as a positive
strategy by the poet to enable such reperformance. As Christopher Carey has argued,
Pindar intentionally obscures details of his poems initial performance so that his
compositions might more easily enter into a larger repertoire of circulating song.
26
That
is, Pindar created his poems with the goal of reperformance in mind. Recent work on
Pindars compositions has begun to demonstrate the sophisticated internal structures
through which Pindars poetry anticipates a response to the complex and contradictory
demands of these multiple reperformance contexts.
27
Whether through contradictory
deictic markers, iterative scenes, or anachronistic tenses, Pindar regularly destabilizes the
sense of a specific performance by introducing another setting which features
performance as a recurrent event.
28
This destabilization of the performative hic et nunc
does not merely allow the poet to anticipate his poems future reperformances. Like the
disruptive effects achieved through the use of apostrophe and oratio recta, these
moments of uncertainty permit the poet to contemplate the new, scriptory character of his
compositions.
The fact that both Pindar and Aeschylus would have been aware of, indeed
anticipated their poems reperformance in a multiplicity of contexts has important
consequences for how they formulated their scriptory poetics. From our earliest sources,
Greek poetry involves the tacit claim that continued performance will contribute to the

25
Morrison (2007) p. 10.
26
Carey (2007) p. 209.
27
Morrison (2007), Hubbard (2004), Felson (1999), Athanassaki (2009), Athanassaki
(forthcoming).
28
Athanassaki (2009) p. 243.
89
immortal fame such poetry confers. But as the practice of reperformance becomes more
prominent, thoughts about the form and importance of a poems future become more
explicit: the character of poetic immortality develops in accordance with performance
practice.
29
Pindar and Aeschylus could not maintain the earlier, vague notion that their
poetry would be repeated, because they not only foresaw, but confronted within their
lifetimes, the real and concrete future of poetic reperformance.
In adopting a more concrete vision of their poetic future as an unending cycle of
reperformance, Pindar and Aeschylus could no longer even tacitly adhere to longstanding
models of oral poetics based on the idea of composition in transmission. They knew
that their work would find voice in countless, unidentified reperformers reproducing an
identical song at any number of occasions in any number of places. It was not, therefore,
possible for them to imagine their work as participating in an ongoing, intersubjective,
hermeneutic project where each performance would determine the shape of (indeed,
recompose) their work for a new audience.
30
They needed a scriptory conception of
reperformance in which a lopsided admixture of new conditions (e.g. the performance
venue, audience, or occasion) assembled around a central constant: the unchanging poetic
text. Without the opportunity for composition in transmission, the poem must contain
within itself the ability adapt to new conditions and to speak to different audiences in any
number of contexts. And it was precisely this malleability of voice within a fixed text that
is able to anticipate its reperformance that Pindar and Aeschylus sought to realize through
their scriptory poetics. Throughout the archaic period, Greek poets had been slowly
adapting their compositions to comprehend the implications of a poetic script,
31
but it is, I
argue, in the choral poetry of Pindar and Aeschylus that we encounter the most sustained
and sophisticated response to this new poetic landscape. As reperformance of a written
script became an ever more central element of their poetic reality, these early fifth-
century poets discovered that the scriptory nature of their work opened untold avenues
for poetic innovation.

29
As Herwig Maehler noted nearly a half a century ago, Pindar is the first poet to speak explicitly
of the endurance of his songs. Maehler (1963) pp. 90-3.
30
Saussy (1996) p. 322. This basic formulation is already present in the work of Lord (1995) p.
102. Cf. Nagy (1996) pp. 60-1.
31
For a discussion of this development, see the introduction to this study.
90
In hexameter poetry, the conceptual shift to the idea of a shared fixed script serving as
the basis for reperformance had already taken hold in the sixth century under the
rhapsodic tradition. In an influential discussion of the sixth-century reception of Homeric
epic, Walter Burkert describes the period as one of radical change, as rhapsodes replaced
singers (aoidoi) and creative improvisation [gave] way to the reproduction of a fixed
text, learned by heart and available also in book form.
32
Rhapsodes were still deeply
embedded in Greeces oral song-culture: they engaged in oral performance of Homers
poems for great crowds at public festivals and introduced the Homeric poems to
audiences that had most likely never encountered the epics in written form. But,
significantly, these singers did not claim to produce texts of their own in public
performance, but were bound to the name of one author of the past, Homer.
33
In this
respect, rhapsodic reperformance represented a radical departure from earlier bardic
practice. Rhapsodic reperformances distinguished the words of Homer contained in his
poetic scripts from the performers who translated those words into sound.
34
Perhaps for
the first time in the Greek world, a clear separation was drawn between the acts of poetic
production and poetic performance.
The rhapsodic revolution of the sixth century had a profound and lasting impact on
the song-culture of ancient Greece through the introduction of a new model of oral poetry
as reperformance. Taking full advantage of the technological advances of writing to fix a
poetic text on which future reperformances could be based, the rhapsodes demonstrated
how reperformance could reanimate the script of an absent poet.
35
This model of

32
Burkert (1987) p. 48. Of course, to speak of the sixth-century written texts of Homer as existing
in book form is somewhat anachronistic, but this infelicitous choice of words does not
invalidate the broad spirit of Burkerts claim.
33
Burkert (1987) pp. 48-9. The claim that rhapsodic performance of Homer involved written texts
is challenged by Nagy (1990) esp. p. 29, but in light of the more general move towards the
textualization of Homer in the sixth century (discussed below), his position appears overly rigid
in its insistence on purely oral transmission. For a detailed discussion of the full range of
possibilities, see Graziosi (2002) pp. 21-40.
34
Burkert (1987) p. 49. As Burkert notes, the impossibility of performing an epic poem in its
entirety further contributes to the perceived separation of text and performance. On the question
of epic unity in the late sixth century, see also Ford (1997).
35
The importance of a written script, whose integrity had to be preserved in the face of potential
rhapsodic interpolation, finds testimony in accounts of the so-called Peisistratid recension, which
would date to precisely this period if it could be proved to have happened. Graziosi (2002) pp.
206-8, with bibliography.
91
rhapsodic reperformance provided our choral poets with a critical conceptual tool. By
disentangling the acts of composition and performance, rhapsodic performance paved the
way for scripted reperformance of all types of poetry, and more importantly, for the self-
reflective scriptory poetics that Pindar and Aeschylus set out in their own compositions.
But if the rhapsodic transformation of Homeric epic was an important precursor of new
attitudes in melic poetry, it was Homer himself, the poet-author behind the texts that the
rhapsodes so freely reperformed, who emerged as the clear exemplar and model for poets
working under these new and exciting conditions.
Outside of, but not unrelated to, the reperformance culture of the rhapsodes, attitudes
towards Homer and his poetry underwent a significant shift during the sixth century. For
as the use of writing established a basis for distinguishing between the acts of
composition and performance, it permitted a corresponding shift in how people thought
about these actions. As Goody and Watt noted in their seminal, if now also justly
criticized, analysis of writing in ancient Greece, the introduction of writing in Greece not
only preserved an authors work but meant that, over time, a critical response to the fixed
works of the past could begin to develop.
36
It is particularly in the sixth century that we
begin to see the written status of poetic texts create a new, critical sense of literary history
and a more self-conscious approach to the interpretation of past poetic works.
37
In Ionia,
where new forms of writing, especially prose treatises, were beginning to emerge,
Homers works were regularly consulted, interpreted, and criticized in a variety of forms.
Most famously, pre-Socratic philosophers like Xenophanes and Heraclitus attacked the
ethical status of Homers poetry, but their criticisms must be understood within a broader
discourse of allegorical interpretation that was emerging at the time.
38
This highly
technical debate is symptomatic of the more general shift in attitude as thinkers had come
to treat Homers poems as fixed texts whose meaning could be debated but whose words
were no longer in flux.
39
It is no coincidence that this same period gave rise to the first
attested treatise on Homers poetry, Theagnes of Rhegiums now lost allegorical

36
Goody and Watt (1968) pp. 42-9, 67-68.
37
As Lloyd notes, this result is not a necessary consequence of the use of writing, but happened to
obtain in ancient Greece, Lloyd (1987) pp. 72-3.
38
On the exclusionary, allegorical, and rationalizing stances taken by early philosophical
writers in relation to the epic poetry of Homer and Hesiod, see Morgan (2000) pp. 46-67.
39
Ford (2002) chaps 2 and 3, Struck (2004) pp. 26-9.
92
interpretation of the epics,
40
and the first formulations of the Homeric biographies, a
tradition which would flourish for many centuries.
41

The realm of poetry, not yet isolated by the conceptual distinction between poetry and
prose, was also implicated in this shift in attitude towards Homer and his poetic legacy.
42

Xenophanes composed his attacks on Homer in verse, after all,
43
and throughout the late
sixth and early fifth century we find poets quoting passages from Homer in a manner that
mirrors the increasingly critical stance of the prose writers towards the epic tradition. The
practice of verse quotation of past poets implicitly points, as Andrew Ford has argued, to
an idea of a Homeric text in the sense of a fixed and definite source of his words.
44

Rather than alluding to a broad and amorphous epic tradition, these poets ascribe lines to
a particular author in order to claim a deeper appreciation of the wisdom and quality
of verses that have been imitated by many.
45
For practitioners of elegiac poetry, quoting
Homers hexameters, as do Simonides (fr. 19 West)
46
and the anonymous author of an
Athenian dedicatory inscription in honor of Kimons victory over the Persians in 479,
47
is
facilitated by metrical convergence: the epic hexameter can be slotted without alteration
into the first, hexameter line of the elegiac distich. The ease of quotational practice was
perhaps further encouraged by longstanding connections between elegy and poetic
inscription, permitting the form a more comfortable relationship to the idea of a poem as
a text fixed in writing.
48
But we also find quotation and named identification of Homer in
melic compositions, such as Simonides famous connection of Homer and Stesichorus in
fr. 564 PMG = 273 Poltera (*g-: 978 %O8*' 3C u-4,+J*8*' [#1,# "4*K'). And

40
Morgan (2000) pp. 63-5, Ford (2002) pp. 68-72.
41
Graziosi (2002).
42
See Goldhill (2002).
43
Why he did so is a matter of scholarly debate. A good range of views are represented by Most
(1999), Osborne (1998) and Granger (2007).
44
Ford (1997) p. 90.
45
Ford (1997) p. 92.
46
Perhaps also fr. 20 West
47
Recorded in Plut. Cimon 7 quoted by Ford (1997) p. 100.
48
On early elegiac inscriptions see Furley (2010). It is, however, important to remember that
elegy also developed within a performative tradition, on which see Faraone (2008) chaps 4, 5, and
6.
93
Pindar follows Simonides practice when he mentions Homer by name in his Pythian 4:
-D& 3' %A8*? 54W -$3# ,?&;0%#&*' {%4 )$8,?&[#] (277).
49

But Homer is not just a source of words to be quoted by the fifth-century melic poet.
The epic poet is also, as another Pindaric passage demonstrates, an important model for
thinking about poetic practice.
50
The reference comes midway through Isthmian 3/4
when, after an extended discussion of Aiaxs glorious career, Pindar notes that the hero
has been honored by Homer in song (55-60):
@""' %O8$' -*1 -#-+%45#& 31' @&;8c):&, k' 4I-*V
)<,4& /8;c,41' @8#-7& 54-7 =F3*& Q>84,#&
;#,)#,+:& ()0:& "*1)*K' @;68#1&.
-*V-* 978 @;=&4-*& >:&<#& f8)#1,
#e -1' #] #e)b -1 54W )=9548)*& ()W J;$&4 54W 317 )$&-*& F0F45#&
(89%=-:& @5-W' 54"D& [,F#,-*' 4n#+.

But Homer honored him amongst mortals, straightening the entire tale of his
virtue when leaning upon his staff of divine verses he spoke it out for future men
to sing. For a thing goes forth with an immortal voice, if someone speaks it well.
And over fertile land and sea the flame of his noble deeds traveled unquenchable
for all time.

The passage is a depiction of Homers compositional technique, as imagined by Pindar,
incorporating elements of scriptory practice into this scene of past poetic practice.
Pindars depiction of a moment in the life of the great poet of the past allows us to
witness Homers coding time, the point at which the physically present poet fashions his
verses. At first the picture seems to conform to our conception of an oral Homer. In
Pindars depiction, the bard unfolds his tale in seemingly spontaneous oral composition,
leaning on his staff for support (54-7 =F3*&). But in the vivid detail of the poet poised
upon his rhabdos, Pindar introduces a clear reference to the tradition of rhapsodic
performance through which Homers compositions enjoyed their rich and multiform
Nachleben. The initial allusion is given fuller elaboration in the subsequent claim that
Homer had in mind such future reperformance when he first composed his verses

49
The Pindaric passage seems to evince a much more subtle engagement with the epic text than
its Simonidean counterpart. The language of the designation is itself allusive, incorporating an
elegant variation on the hexameter line: [""* 30 -*1 (80:, ,d 3' (&W >8#,W F=""#* ,`,1. (7x Il.,
7x Od.).
50
Carey (2007) pp. 199-200.
94
("*1)*K' @;68#1&). In Pindars portrait, Homer anticipates the future reperformances that
await his newly composed verses. He is, like Pindar, a scriptory poet. And to ensure that
the import of this densely packed subordinate clause does not go unnoted, Pindar
rephrases the key feature of his Homeric portrait in the remaining lines of the passage.
Homers divine verses his thespesia epea Pindar now states baldly, will find immortal
voice (@;=&4-*& >:&<#&) in the singers of the future. His songs will travel over land
and sea because Homer has spoken them well and thus made it possible for others to do
the same. Both composer and reperformer share a single indefinite pronoun (-1'); to bring
Homers songs to life is a common task shared by all those who come into contact with
the script. But the reduplication of the agents involved with the song also points to the
confusion of identity and multiplication of voice that is central to this type of
reperformance. Pindars Homer is not just a singer, but a poet of scripted song who
anticipates the future reperformance of his work even as he presides over its composition.
He is thus ready to share his divinely inspired voice with others as a poet who, as
Privitera explains, wishes to provide a song of praise that rhapsodes would be able to
repeat forever, wherever they were.
51
To borrow a page from Haun Saussys elegant
interpretation of the play between orality and writing in the Odyssey, Pindars portrait of
Homer has replaced the image of the imperfect, inauthentic repetition of the oral poet
with the singular, permanent, and self-evident communication of written transmission,
which speaks openly and equally to all interlocutors, present and future.
52

Pindars figuration of Homer in Isthmian 3/4 signals the new perspective that an acute
awareness of reperformance establishes for composers of melic poetry in the first decades
of the fifth century. Poetry must look forward to the loipoi who will give voice to mute
scripts in future performance and it is for these men (as an audience of vicarious, future
selves) that the poet now crafts his verses. The scope is not limited to a single moment of
secondary performance, but comprises countless iterations in which the text will yet
again be given life and find its immortal voice in the mouths of new performers, in new
places and times. The expansion exceeds the authors ability to anticipate the conditions
of these performances and the task of prefiguring them thus becomes an exercise in

51
Privitera (1982) p. 180, translation mine.
52
Saussy (1996) pp. 330-3.
95
poetic imagination. For Pindar and also, as we will see, for Aeschylus Homer is the
prototype, the pote par excellence who models through the contours of his own
posthumous career the unforeseen future that the fifth-century melic poet also hopes to
enjoy.
53
As a long-dead predecessor who continues to enjoy a degree of presence and
power through his verses texts fixed by writing which still find voice in continued
reperformance Homer presents a paradigm for our poets as they contemplate the dual
nature of their own compositions. As in Pindars portrait, Homer can perfectly balance
the spatio-temporal paradoxes of scriptory poetry; he maintains the integrity of his own
voice, tied to the unique and inalienable moment of poetic composition, but at the same
time he permits and even invites the vocal multiplicity that successful reperformance
entails. Thus even as his verses are dispersed across time and space in the polyphonous
performances of his many impersonators, Homer is understood to possess a personal style
and identity which ensures that his voice is heard in each of these performative
iterations.
54
In the remainder of this chapter we will examine just how Pindar and
Aeschylus made use of this Homeric model to fashion their own scriptory poetics.

2. READY WORDS
The paradigmatic quality of Homers poetry is seen clearly in those moments when
Pindar mentions the epic poet by name, whether as a positive or (as in the case of the
famous rebuke of Nemean 7) a negative model for his own poetic project.
55
Yet Homer
surfaces as an exemplary figure for the compositional dilemmas of our fifth-century poets

53
Briand (2001) pp. 43-4.
54
On textual fixity as a necessary for stylistic analysis, see Saussy (1996) p. 310: Simply as a
point of method, to draw attention to whatever in a text is a fact of language [as analysis of oral
composition does] is to neutralize that set of markers that literary reading knows as the
components of style. A style may be uniquecertainly the use of the word coupled with an
individuals name tends to suggest as much in modern literary discussionsbut a language
should have more than one speaker.
55
Briand (2001) gives a comprehensive overview of occurrences. One passage that is often cited
as an example of the antagonistic stance that Pindar takes towards his epic predecessor is fr. 52h:
%A8*? [3C %R -81])-E& 54-' @%4P1-$& n$&-#', @[""' @"]"*-8+41' @&' o))*1' 5-". However,
the lacunose nature of the papyrus fragment makes it impossible to determine whether the
negative tone reflected in Snells reconstruction is in fact original to the poem. For an analysis
that stresses this agonistic aspect of Pindars relationship to Homer, see Loscalzo (2003) esp.
chap. 1.
96
with far greater frequency than Pindars few explicit references to him would suggest.
56

Both Pindar and Aeschylus perceive Homers verses (and voices) as possessing a special
spatio-temporal quality by dint of their regular reperformance, a feature that harmonizes
perfectly with their own conception of the scriptory nature of poetic speech.
57
Because of
his unique vocal properties, Homer is fundamental to the use of oratio recta in both
Pindar and Aeschylus. And the distinctive voice of the epic poet can be heard with
special clarity in those moments when Pindar and Aeschylus expose the vocal
instabilities of their own compositions.
Homeric epic is the exemplar of the mixed dictional mode. He is the poet who most
demands to be quoted, but he is also the voice of quotation, of mimetic representation and
vocal dissimulation. In fact, it is the difficulty of distinguishing Homers voice from that
of his embedded speakers that most powerfully exposes the overlapping dynamics of
diegesis and mimesis that so fascinate Pindar and Aeschylus.
58
Homer hides himself, as
Plato says, when he makes use of oratio recta, yet his voice can still be identified behind
the speeches of his characters.
59
This uncertainty of voice is compounded in rhapsodic
reperformance, where the polyphony of Homers mixed diction is redoubled by an
additional level of performative mimesis. The reperformers of Homers epics must
impersonate the bard as well as the many characters whose voices are mimetically
embedded in his poems.
60
The single person of the rhapsodic performer gives voice to a
diverse range of speakers from across time and space, bringing them all into harmony
through the act of reperformance. The performance of a scriptory song obscures the
already nebulous relationship between poet and embedded speaker by further embedding

56
Nagy, though approaching them from a perspective very different to my own, also notes that
Pindar and Aeschylus use a remarkably similar conceptual framework in their appreciation of
Homers exemplary status. Nagy (2000).
57
See above, chap. 1.
58
As Ford notes, fifth-century quotations of Homer generally ascribe to the poet the words and
sentiments expressed in the mimetic speeches of his characters. The epic poet is assumed to
endorse everything said in his poem. Ford (1997) p. 91. In addition, Homeric passages make up
the vast majority of illustrations offered in Classical and Hellenistic theoretical writing on
dictional modes. Fantuzzi (1988) pp. 47-85, Nnlist (2009) pp. 94-102.
59
n 30 9# %O34%*V /$0%1' 2,&#34,%&5%& 6 ,&57%8), )<,4 & 4I- [&#? %1%A,#:' Y
)*+O,+' -# 54W 31A9O,1' 9#9*&?K4 #eO. o&4 3C %R #e)b' N-1 *I5 4] %4&;=&#1', N):' &
-*V-* 90&*1-* (9v >8=,:. Rep. 393c11-d3.
60
The mimetic nature of the performance of Homeric embedded speech is discussed by Bakker
(2009).
97
the internal poetic hierarchies within the frame of a mimetic reperformance. The poetic
voices are thus ever more tightly interwoven, blurring the boundaries between poet and
performer, text and song, past and present.
Pindars reliance on Homer as a model for vocal mutability is particularly evident in
the clustering of epic allusions around occurrences of oratio recta in his poems. There are
a number of formal reasons for this connection which should be acknowledged before
looking towards thematic questions. Throughout his poetry, Pindars engagement with
Homer at the most basic level of word-choice is noteworthy for the later poets frequent
reconfiguration of what we now understand to be Homers formulaic language.
61

Because speeches and speech-making are a central component of epic narrative, the
hexameter tradition boasted a well-established and sophisticated formulaic vocabulary for
the description and narration of speeches.
62
Given the prevalence of speech-formulae in
Homer, it should come as no surprise that Pindar exercised his brand of creative re-
configuration on this sphere of the Homeric lexicon with some frequency, reformulating
well-worn hexameter formulae such as winged, gentle, and sweet-voiced words to
fit his melic compositions.
63
A wonderful example is found in Pythian 6, where Homers
common description of a speech as pteroenta epea is reworked as litotes: J4%41)#-C' 3'
[8' Q)*' *I5 @)081p#& (37). The formal connection of shared structural vocabulary is
even more keenly felt in the language which frames Pindars direct speeches. The lyric
poet employs elements of the standardized formulae of hexameter speech, but unlike, for
instance, Stesichorus or his contemporary Bacchylides, Pindar imposes a novel reworking
on each iteration of the standard form, offering a new re-engagement with the hexameter
model with every embedded speech. The rarity and isolation of Pindars speeches imbues
this engagement with the most familiar elements of the hexameter tradition with an
almost paradoxically consistent sense of novelty; each instance exhibits a freshness

61
Hummel (1993), Hummel (1999), Sotiriou (1998). Pindar himself may have understood the
frequent repetitions in the hexameter epics in a similar way, since traditional techniques of oral
composition were likely still in use in the sixth and fifth centuries: Egoscozabal (2004), Sideras
(1971), Garson (1985).
62
Martin (1989).
63
Sotiriou (1998) p. 41-2: )-#8$#&-4 &0*& ,6%)#%p*& g%&*& I.5.63; %4";45 >:& P.4.137,
"68t -# 54W >;09%4-1 %4";45 P.8.31, %4";45 &154>*8+4 ,d& @*13 N.9.49; %#"19=8?#'
g%&*1 O.11.4, P.3.64, I.2.3, %#"19486:& -05-*&#' 5c%:& N.3.4-5.
98
within its particular context, but taken together the many reformulated allusions create a
cohesive picture of Pindars deep connection to epic language and models in these
moments of transition between dictional modes.
Pindars manipulation of Homeric allusion to reconfigure the relationship between
embedded and framing speaker in is exemplified by the subtle usage in Isthmian 6. The
mythical narrative relates an episode in which the great hero Herakles offers two
speeches, first a prayer then a prophecy, on behalf of his comrade, Telamon. The
language framing Herakles speeches is, as Privitera remarks, of a particularly epic
character.
64
Before beginning his first speech, Herakles stretches up his hands in prayer
following a typically Homeric formulation,
65
and the inquit introduction to the speech is
adopted almost verbatim from the Homeric lexicon: 4}34,# -*1*V-*& Q)*' (42) ~ Q)*'
O}34 (Il.6.54).
66
Following the heros initial prayer, the immediate dispatch of the bird
omen maps easily onto Homeric models as does the reintroduction of Herakles speaking
voice.
67
Since such borrowings from hexameter are common in lyric, the density of
allusion might be thought unremarkable in this passage if not for the final framing
element, following the conclusion of Herakles second speech: ' 84 #n)v& 4I-+54 /
fy#-' (54-5). The formulation is undeniably Homeric,
68
a variation on the full-line
formulae found commonly in the Homeric epics (Iliad: ^-*1 N 9' ' #n)v& 54-' [8'
fy#-* -*K,1 3' @&0,-O;
69
and Odyssey: ' >=;', ~ 3' 4]-1' [8' fy#-' (P0,-*? ()W
3+>8*?).
70
Pindars strong enjambment of the verb, marking the end of the mythic
digression and juxtaposed against the return of the poets own voice in prayer to the

64
Privitera (1982) ad loc.
65
~ 3' @&4-#+&41' *I84& J#K84' @%=J*?', (41) ~ Il.1.450, 3.275, 5.174, 18.75, 19.254, Od.
13.355, 20.97.
66
Sotiriou (1998) p. 72. Also 10.377, 10.461, 11.379, 12.163,13.619, 14.500, 15.114, 17.119,
17.537, 20.424, 21.183, 24.307, Od. 13.119. Also ,-{ 3C )8$,;' 4I-*K* Q)*' -0 %1& @&-+*&
O}34 5.170.
67
#i)0& -# >:&A,41' .6.51 compare >:&A,4' Q)#4 ()-#8$#&-4) )8*,O634 Il.1.122. Sotiriou
(1998) p. 78.
68
Privitera (1982) ad loc.
69
Il.1.68, 101, 2.76, 7.354, 365. Also found at Od. 2.224.
70
17.602, 24.408; ' #n)v& 54-' [8' fy#-' ()' (,J=8b (& 5*&+b,1 7.153; p 3' 4]-1' 54-' [8'
fy#-' ()W ;8$&*? Q&;#& @&0,-O 18.157, 21.139, 166; p 3' (";v& 54-' [8' fy#-' ()W
)8*}J*&-1 %#"=;8L, 19.544; ' [84 >:&A,4' 54-' [8' fy#-*, SO"0%4J*' 3C 16.213; p 3'
N 9' ()' *I3E& nv& 54-' [8' fy#-*, 573 3' [84 )A8O& / ;{5#& ()"#+O&, %#-7 3C %&O,-{8,1&
Q#1)# 17.466-7; p 3' N 9' ()' *I3E& nv& 54-' [8' fy#-* -*W 3' e,4& #e,: / Y3d 9#"c*&-#'
54W 3#154&$:&-' ()0#,,1 18.110-11.
99
Muses (fy#-.. (%*W 3C %458E& 5-".), is also highly reminiscent of Homeric hexameter
phrasing, where the verb hezeto frequently occurs in line-initial enjambment.
71
But unlike
the Homeric formulae, where the speech of the now-seated speaker almost always finds a
response (hence the formulaic line ending, -*K,1 3' @&0,-O), Pindars Herakles takes his
seat in isolation, his only response is far in the future in the voice of the poet recounting
his tale. The dynamic deployment of the allusive inquit frame results in a breach of the
poems dictional hierarchy of the type we explored in the previous chapter. The striking
juxtaposition of framer and framed sets the poet in dialogue with a distant interlocutor
whose voice he has just impersonated as speaking from within his mythical tale. The
dictional shift that brought Herakles voice momentarily into the hic et nunc is not
diffused or contained by the concluding inquit frame, but is rather permitted to continue
its incursion into the present and to enter into the ambit of Pindars discursive field. But
the anachronistic exchange is not limited to the two speaking figures, the poet of the
present and the hero of the past: through the concerted manipulation of Homeric language
specifically the formalized language of hexameter inquit formulae Pindar triangulates
the spatio-temporal complexities of the passage through the voice of Homer as well. The
poet from the past, the model for poetic reperformance and the temporal and geographic
durability of the poets voice, now attends Pindars own transmission of voice through
time, shepherding the embedded speaker into the hic et nunc of Pindars performative
present through the allusively embedded reperformance of his words.
The influence of Homers voice over Pindars oratio recta extends beyond the frame
of direct speech into the content and tone of the speeches themselves. Returning to the
rich speeches of Olympian 6 which guided our inquiry in the last chapter, we can see the
close pairing of dictional mode and Homeric allusion at work in Adrastus speech at the
start of the poem. A scholion notes that the words Pindar quotes in the voice of Adrastus
were in fact taken from the epic Thebaid (~ U,5"O)1=3O' >O,W -4V-4 #n"O>0&41 (5
-{' 5?5"15{' rOF4w3*').
72
Pindars speech is not a perfect hexameter, but it is
sufficiently hexametric for Bernab to print a close approximation as a certain fragment

71
fy#-* is found in line-initial enjambment at Il.1.48, 2.42, 8.443, 15.150 22.275, 23.235, 350,
24.597 Od. 1.437, 2.14, 417, 4.136, 6.236, 14.31, 21.243, 392, 22.240, 23.89.
72
Scholia vetera. So too the scholia recentiora: #i)#& (& -4K' rAF41' ~ ?E' -*V S4"4*V ~
l384,-*' -*1*V-$& -1 Q)*' )*;D n3#K& 3O"*&$-1 -E& />;4"%E& -{' (%{' ,-84-1<'.
100
in his Poetae Epici Graeci.
73
If the attribution is correct, the embedded speech gives
voice not only to the words of Adrastus but also to those of the author of the Thebaid,
most likely thought to be Homer himself.
74
Pindars ainos hetoimos, as he designates
Adrastus speech, is not only apt, but also ready-to-hand;
75
the words have already
been spoken by the hero, but more remarkably, they have already been spoken by Homer.
The coded language of Pindars frame functions as an Alexandrian footnote avant la
lettre, signaling the allusive nature of the quotation. But this is not a simple allusion. Set
within oratio recta, the act of quotation is made explicit and the embedded speaker is
made to stand as a surrogate for the embedded poet. As such, the embedded speech
becomes a reperformance of Homers epic, a mimetic conjuring of the epic poet within
the melic song. The hic et nunc of first-person speech, which Pindar so overtly claims to
share with the embedded speaker, stands as an analogue for the immediacy of
reperformance. By renewing the performative power of Homers scriptory verses through
the voice of his embedded speaker whose voice Pindar in turn impersonates in oratio
recta Pindar parallels his own poetic future as a voice to be made present through the
voices of others. As Pindar asserts, the speech of the past poet is identical to his own.
Homer thus offers the melic poet his model for embedded speech, but as well as a
blueprint for the more comprehensive mimetic project of poetic reperformance. The
model of Homers scriptory epics will be the basis for Pindars own poems. For, like
Homer, the fifth-century melic poet speaks both with his own voice and with those of
others, internally, through the use of oratio recta, and externally, through the fact of
scriptory reperformance.
Like Pindar, Aeschylus manipulates the alternative first-person voices introduced
through oratio recta to reveal Homers paradigmatic role in defining the complementary
relationship between the internal narrative structure of his poems and the external
expectations of scriptory reperformance. Although the epic poet is never mentioned by

73
Fr. 10 (=5K., A) Bernab (1996). The attribution is further supported by Sotiriou (1998) p. 169,
who notes the numerous parallels with constructions found in our extant epic sources. See also
Suarez de la Torre (1988) p. 68.
74
The allusive nature of the quotation is noted by Kurke (1990) p. 89. On the view that the
Thebaid would have been considered the work of Homer in the fifth century, see Ford (1997) p.
88, Fitch (1922), Nisetich (1989) p. 1, Lloyd-Jones (2002) pp. 2-3.
75
Carne-Ross (1976) p. 10.
101
name, poetic quotation and allusion, especially in conjunction with oratio recta, allow
Homers texts to be reperformed on the Aeschylean stage just as they are within Pindars
poems. And this allusive engagement results in a similarly self-conscious reflection on
the bifurcated, scriptory nature of Aeschylus own dramatic compositions.
The harmony of our poets view of Homer is clearly evidenced by Aeschylus
deployment of the same formulaic phrasing from the Homeric Thebaid that Pindar quotes
in Olympian 6. In the Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus inserts the allusion into the mouth
of the messenger reporting back to Eteocles on the enemys battle array: f5-*& "#9*1%.
& [&384 ,:>8*&0,-4-*& / @"5A& -' [81,-*&, %=&-1&, U%>1=8#: F+4& (568-9).
76

Like Pindar, Aeschylus couples his allusion to the hexameter formula with direct speech.
The phrase is not itself used within a quotation, but serves to introduce the only moment
of true oratio recta in the play. The messenger, the ekphrastic story-teller on the stage, is
thus recast as a rhapsode, voicing the narrative of the epic poet, at the very moment when
he most fully performs the mixed diction of Homers poems. The sophisticated scriptory
engagement of poetic communication presented in this play will be examined in further
detail in chapter three. For the present, we will turn once again to Calchas, the seer of the
Trojan expedition, and complete our examination of the scriptory dynamics of the
Agamemnon parodos by exploring how Homeric allusion is employed to highlight the
complex dictional combinations of that remarkably sophisticated melic passage.
Scholars have long noted the extreme epic tenor of the Agamemnon parodos and the
essential role that this opening choral passage plays in adding heightened force to the
Homeric themes that run throughout the play. The ode is noteworthy both for the unusual,
highly dactylic meters in its second section and for the multiple marked allusions to the
Homeric epics, the Iliad in particular.
77
One rich strand of this allusive tapestry is the
pairing of Aeschylus two embedded speakers, Calchas and Agamemnon, whose
Homeric counterparts engage in an analogous verbal exchange in the first book of the

76
The allusion is noted by Hutchinson (1985) ad loc.
77
Easterling (1987), Garner (1990) pp. 31-40, Degener (2001) p. 65, Lynn-George (1993).
Leahys exploration of the contemporary realism that characterizes much of Aeschylus
depiction of the Trojan war should serve as a caution against too eagerly ascribing Homeric
models to all Homeric themes. Leahy (1974). Further prudence is counseled by West, who
argues that Archilochus represents an equally important poetic model for the parodos: West
(1979).
102
Iliad.
78
As in Pindar, the quotation of the Homeric text is coupled with embedded speech,
redoubling the perceived impersonation and recasting the oratio recta as a kind of
reperformance. Because of the length and complexity of the parodos narrative in
comparison to the Pindaric passages examined above, we can trace a more developed
engagement with the Homeric source-text through the multiple points of allusive
contact.
79

The sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis as described in the parodos does not feature
explicitly in the Iliad, but it has often been suspected that Homer alludes to this
component of the Trojan cycle in the first book of the Iliad, when Agamemnon rejects
Calchas instructions on the basis of the poor results of past prophecies (106-8):
80

%=&-1 545D& *I )c )*-0 %*1 -E 58A9?*& #i)4'
4n#+ -*1 -7 5=5' (,-W >+"4 >8#,W %4&-#6#,;4
(,;"E& 3' *}-0 -+ ): #i)4' Q)*' *}-' (-0"#,,4'

Oh prophet of evils, never have you said anything of use to me; always is it dear
to your thinking to prophesy evil and not once have you spoken a good word or
brought a good [deed] to completion.

If Agamemnons rebuke is indeed motivated by his memory of the sacrifice of Iphigenia,
the passage looks back to a time before the stage in the war narrated in the Iliad, to the
events which first brought the Achaeans from Greece to Troy. Where the Iliad represents
Agamemnons recollection of the prophets past actions, Aeschylus inverts the temporal
vantage by drawing attention to the fact that the Agamemnon of the parodos has as yet
no doubt of Calchas claims: Y9#%v& ~ )80,F?' &#D& UJ4115D&, 9:'%5' &;%5'$
<"=>' (154-6). The temporal inversion is coupled with a dictional shift, taking the
words which Agamemnon speaks in oratio recta in the Iliad and putting them in the
mouth of the Chorus, here functioning as a kind of framing narrator. And as the Chorus
adopt the words of Homers mimetic characters, the embedded speakers of Aeschylus

78
Adrados (1989) p. 303.
79
Also helpful is the fact that, unlike quotations from the Thebaid, we can identify the context
from which Aeschylus Iliadic allusions are drawn.
80
Iphigenia is not mentioned in the Iliad, where Agamemnons three daughters G8?,$;#%1' 54W
4*3+5O 54W >1=&4,,4 (9.145) are still alive. The earliest reference to Iphigenia is found in
the Cypria, fr. 15, on which see Janko (1982) who cites the comments of Lobel (1965), where she
is distinguished from Iphianassa, thus making it probable that Aeschylus understood Iphigenias
death to be assumed, though never explicitly mentioned, by the Iliad narrative.
103
parodos are made to speak in the language of the Homeric narrator, as Calchas warns of
the powerful memory of wrath (154-5):
%+%&#1 978 >*F#87 )4"+&*8-*'
*n5*&$%*' 3*"+4, 9':9>' ?@'5) -#5&$)*1&*'.

For an unrelenting housekeeper, frightening and deceitful, remains, a wrath that
remembers, child-avenging.

The use of the first word of the Iliad, possibly considered the title of the epic in the
fifth century, alludes not only to the events narrated by that poem and made possible by
the sailing from Aulis, but to Calchas own meta-poetic prophecy at Iliad 1, in which the
seer claims to recount the wrath of Apollo (69-77):
!="J4' r#,-*8+3O' *n:&*)$":& J' [81,-*',
A) B!7 %: %' +*'%$ %: %' +CC*9-'$ ,3* %' +*'%$,
54W '8-CC' D=8C$%' EF$5G' HI5&' -JC>
& 317 %4&-*,6&O&, -A& * )$8# *KF*' U)$"":&
N ,>1& (d >8*&0:& @9*8A,4-* 54W %#-0#1)#&
UJ1"#V 50"#4+ %# B1 >+"# 90K8C$CK$5
9@'5' E,*II>'&) j54-OF#"0-4* [&45-*'
-*W 978 (9v& (80: ,d 3C ,6&;#* 54+ %*1 %*,,*&
%0& %*1 )8$>8:& Q)#,1& 54W J#8,W& @8AP#1&

Calchas the son of Thestor, by far the best of the augurs, who perceived the things
that are, and will be, and have been, and lead the ships of the Achaeans to Ilion
by means of prophetic skill, which Phoebus Apollo gave to him. He stood up
before them well disposed and spoke: Achilles, dear to Zeus, you command me
to recount the wrath of Apollo the lord who shoots from afar. And yes, I will say
this to you, but you consider and swear to me that you will readily defend me with
word and deed.

The Homeric description of Calchas demonstrates a strong resemblance to Hesiods
portrayal of the Muses in the Theogony, as both are said to possess special knowledge of
past, present, and future.
81
Because his prophetic vision is not subject to human temporal
constraints, the seer resembles the divine Muses who inspire epic song and his words are
thus imbued with an additional layer of poetic fertility. In his discussion of the Iliad
passage, Andrew Ford has argued that the commonly noted similarity between Calchas
and the Muses is further developed through the titling syntax in line 75 [which] suggests

81
Theog.38: #e8*?,41 -= -' ($&-4 -= -' (,,$%#&4 )8$ -' ($&-4.
104
that the Wrath of Apollo is a seers account of events that are later reincorporated into the
poets Wrath of Achilles.
82
Like Homer himself, Calchas is a singer of mnis whose
speech is a kind of poetic performance embedded within the larger epic text.
83
Ford also
observes that the identification of Calchas as a pathfinder introduces another point of
overlap between mantis and poet. The Iliad represents Calchas as possessed of a gift of
prophecy [that] enables him not only to see deeply into the present and future but also to
lead the Achaean ships to Troy.
84
Given the significance of the idea of a road or path as
a metaphor for poetic production throughout Homer,
85
Ford reads this line as a further
indication of the passages figuration of Calchas as proto-poet finding the path of song
for the Trojan cycle.
The characterization of Calchas as he appears in the Iliad helps to broaden our
understanding of the Aeschylean representation of the mantis, who claims to find the
path to Troy in the first words of his speech (50"#?;*' 126), and recounts the child-
avenging Wrath which might well be understood, in light of the Homeric Calchas
titling syntax, as an epicizing title for the Agamemnon itself. A relationship to the epic
Muses similar to that set out in Homer is hinted at by the Choruss description of
Calchas prophetic vision and understanding. Their narration stresses Calchas visual
perception of the double eagle portent that attended the Argive forces at Aulis (123-5):
n3v& 36* "A%4,1 31,,*d'
U-8#w34' %4J+%*?' (3=O "49*34+-4'
)*%)*6' -' @8J=' *g-: 3' #i)# -#8xy:&

Seeing the two bellicose sons of Atreus in the double boldness [of the eagles] he
knew the hare-devouring beasts to be escorts of the command. And thus speaking
he prophesied

Calchas vision is not unlike that of the Muses of Homer, who see things that are only
known by the poet through report, as is stated in the famous invocation that precedes the
catalogue of ships: H%#K' 978 ;#4+ (,-# )=8#,-0 -# e,-0 -# )=&-4, / Y%#K' 3C 5"0*'

82
Ford (1992) p. 48.
83
For discussion of other poet-figures within the Homeric epics, see Segal (1994), Goldhill
(1991) pp. 56-68.
84
Ford (1992) p. 48.
85
On which see the seminal study of Becker (1937).
105
*i*& @5*6*%#& *I30 -1 e3%#& (2.485-6).
86
In both texts, the seer is imbued with poetic
knowledge alongside his temporal insight. In the Agamemnon, however, this double
nature of the seer is triangulated through the poetic tradition itself. When Aeschylus
Calchas warns of the wrath that Agamemnons deed may incur, he not only takes on the
role of proto-poet but alludes to himself doing so in Homers text. And through the
vivid presentation of his words in oratio recta, Aeschylus turns the allusion into a
reperformance. Calchas, speaking vicariously through the polyphonous song of the
Chorus, emerges as he would from the voice of the rhapsodic performer. But his words
do not simply replicate his epic role. Aeschylus Calchas anticipates his Homeric
figuration, which still lies in the future from the perspective of the internal narrative,
while at the same time looking back to the history of his textual past, to the poem that
sings the Wrath of Achilles in which he is called on to sing the Wrath of Apollo.
There are three distinct layers of temporal interaction between the Homeric poem and
the Agamemnon parodos. Insofar as it serves as the poetic inspiration and model for
Aeschylus composition, the Iliad stands in the distant past, the product of the long-dead
epic poet. In relation to the events at Aulis which the Chorus relate, by contrast, the Iliad
stands in the future; the narrative of the Trojan war is as yet unknown to the Achaeans as
they set out towards Priams shores. However, the parodos is itself a narrative of the past
within the action of the Agamemnon; from the Choruss perspective, the Trojan war has
just ended and the events of Homers epics have been concluded (the Iliad) or are still in
progress (the Odyssey, which will become the more dominant of the extant Homeric epics
as the play develops). The palimpsest of the two texts allows the poet to fashion an
anomalous time-scape of inversions and juxtapositions.
87
The topsy-turvy relationship
between the two scripted texts is echoed by the vocal reversals that place the words of
Homers embedded characters in the song of Aeschylus Chorus and allows them to

86
The Chorus do not share with Calchas, or the Muses, the certain knowledge of autopsy and at
the crucial moment, it is an explicit claim not to have been present, not to have seen, that justifies
their silence: -7 3' Q&;#& *}-' #i3*& *}-' (&&0): (248).
87
As Barrett perceptively notes, following on from his brief discussion of Atossas mantic dream
in the Persae, one can discern two important qualities of narrative in Aeschylean texts: first, that
a narrative of even relatively simple temporal structure can prove to be quite complex, and,
second, that this structure may articulate with the dramas broader engagement with time.
Barrett (2007) p. 257.
106
impersonate the voice of the Homeric narrator in the double mimesis of oratio recta.
Calchas, quoting himself from within his embedded speech, is the fixed point of vocal
unity. And yet, his speech is the most complex reperformance, since Aeschylus allusive
re-purposing of his meta-poetic words reenacts a poetic performance already embedded
in the Homeric source-text. The seer, therefore, more than any other figure in the
parodos, stands apart from himself in time and space. As was detailed in the last chapter,
Calchas anticipates the song of the Agamemnon Chorus who will impersonate his words;
he brings his own voice into harmony with theirs across the temporal divide through his
performative expressions the ailinon refrain and the invocation of Apollo Paean. But
Calchas also transcends the boundary of the dramas spatio-temporal plane, entering into
dialogue with the Iliads narration of his subsequent actions. Calchas prophetic voice
thus fuses the dictional polyphony of the parodos with the literal polyphony of Homeric
reperformance, opening up the boundaries of Aeschylus dramatic world to encompass
the temporal extension, material history, and concomitant enunciative distance (or rather,
mediation) of Homers epic poems within the emphatically present, performative hic et
nunc of the plays fully mimetic action.
As we saw in the last chapter, it is the interweaving of multiple moments of transition
between dictional modes that supplies the parodos with the power behind its exceptional
spatio-temporal structure. This technique of slowly accumulated resonance, a hallmark of
Aeschylean style more generally,
88
finds a parallel in the development of the odes
Homeric interface. It is possible, for instance, to trace Calchas characteristic path-finding
through the length of the parodos, from the earliest expression of the Choruss thoughts
about the war through to their announcement of Klytemnestra at the close of the song.
89


88
A subject well treated in the seminal works of Lebeck (1971), Fowler (1967), and Zeitlin
(1965).
89
The theme is first introduced in the Choruss opening meditation on the ten years that have
passed since the Argive fleet departed; it is developed through their claim to sing the pathlike
power of the Trojan expedition (N31*& 58=-*' 103) and continued through the repetition of that
same adjective, pathlike, in their subsequent description of the portentous eagles (/8&+;:&
~3+:& 157); and in both of these marked formulations lies an echo of the winged sea-journey of
the vultures in the Choruss earlier 58=-*' 103) and continued through the repetition of that
same adjective, pathlike, in their subsequent description of the portentous eagles (/8&+;:&
~3+:& 157); and in both of these marked formulations lies an echo of the winged sea-journey of
the vultures in the Choruss earlier simile ()-#869:& (8#-%*K,1& (8#,,$%#&*1 52). The idea of
paths and traveling again emerges in the course of the Hymn to Zeus, where the Chorus express
107
Aeschylus employs this extended epic modeling to refract the multiple voices contained
in the parodos through the lens of Homers own dictional variety. The many voices of
Homers Iliad are deployed in the ode so as to enact a critical reperformance of the epic
narrative.
The central interest in how manipulations of voice structure this allusive stance is
exemplified by the simile with which the parodos begins. Early in the anapaestic opening
of the parodos, the Chorus introduce a bird simile of undeniably Homeric origin (48-62):
%094& (5 ;?%*V 5"=y*&-#' l8O
-8$)*& 4n9?)1D&,
*o-' (5)4-+*1' ["9#,1 )4+3:&
g)4-*1 "#J0:& ,-8*>*31&*V&-41
)-#869:& (8#-%*K,1& (8#,,$%#&*1,
3#%&1*-A8O
)$&*& /8-4"+J:& /"0,4&-#'
g)4-*' 3' @+:& ^ -1' U)$"":&
a s7& a #d' *n:&$;8**&
9$*& /P?F$4& -D&3# %#-*+5:&
H,-#8$)*1&*&
)0%)#1 )484F<,1& 81&6&.
*g-: 3' U-80:' )4K34' ~ 58#+,,:&
()' U"#P=&38L )0%)#1 P0&1*'
#d' )*"?=&*8*' @%>W 9?&415$'.

Shrieking a great war from their breasts, in the manner of vultures, who in
extreme grief for their children high above their beds wheel around, rowing with
feathered oars, having lost the unfledged labor of their nestlings. But high above
some Apollo or Pan or Zeus hears the sharp-shouted lament of these settlers and
sends a late-revenging Fury to the transgressors. Thus great Zeus Xenios sends
the children of Atreus against Alexander, because of the many-manned woman.

The simile is rightly famous, comparing, with strong Homeric overtones, the Atreidais
war cry (5"=y*&-#' l8O) to the cries of vultures lamenting the loss of their young

what is often thought to be the guiding principle not only of the Agamemnon, but of the trilogy as
a whole -E& >8*&#K& F8*-*d' 6!LC$'%$, -E& )=;#1 %=;*' ;0&-4 5?8+:' QJ#1& (176-8),
89

and ultimately through the almost inconsequential aside that announces the arrival of
Clytemnestra at the conclusion of their song: )0"*1-* 3' *]& _ ')W -*6-*1,1& #] )8<P1', M'
;0"#1 -$3' [9J1,-*& U)+4' 94+4' %*&$>8*?8*& f85*' (255-6). Retaining the spatial force of
[9J1,-*& as supported by the geographic specificity of U)+4' 94+4', thus making Clytemnestra
the metaphoric end of the path (the f85*') back to Argos, towards which the Chorus now travel
(5: ,#F+y:& ,E& !"?-41%A,-84 58=-*' 257). The spatial metaphor is dismissed by Fraenkel
(1950) ad loc.
108
(-8$)*& 4n9?)1D&). Like Knoxs lion in the house,
90
the wailing birds are comparable
to many characters in addition to the Atreidai; the resonances of their cries shift over the
course of the trilogy,
91
and the image is soon recast by the Chorus as the eagle omen of
their subsequent dactylo-iambic song.
Two specific Homeric source passages for the parodos simile, one from the Iliad and
one from the Odyssey, have generally been identified by scholars. The first instance is
found in the midst of the Patrocleia to describe the shouts of the raging battle (16.428-
31):
92

s=-8*5"*' 3' j-08:;#& ()#W e3#& Q5;*8# 3+>8*?.
* 3' Z' -' 4n9?)1*W 94%pc&?J#' @95?"*J#K"41
)0-8b (>' HpO"` %#9="4 #I:M&'%- 9:F>'%$5,
' * #-#I8=&'%-) ()' @""A"*1,1& 8*?,4&.

And Patroclus saw them from the other side and jumped from his chariot. And
they, just like vultures with their hooked talons and crooked beaks shriek aloud
from upon a high rock when they are warring, so the men shrieked as they rushed
at each other.

The second occurs in book 16 of the Odyssey, at the emotional climax of Odysseus first
meeting with Telemachus following his return to Ithaca (213-221):
' [84 >:&A,4' 54-' [8' fy#-*, SO"0%4J*' 3C
@%>1J?;#W' )4-08' (,;"E& /368#-* 3=58?4 "#+F:&.
@%>*-08*1,1 3C -*K,1& H>' o%#8*' 8-* 9$*1*
#I$N&' 3C "190:', _31&c-#8*& ^ -' *n:&*+,
>{&41 a 4n9?)1*W 94%pc&?J#', &OCP %- %"#'$
2=3*%$5 +Q-PI&'%& ,:3&) ,-%-7'R =-'"CK$5
' [84 -*+ 9' ("##1&E& H)' />86,1 3=58?*& #iF*&.
54+ &6 5' /3?8*%0&*1,1& Q3? >=*' #"+*1*,
#n %R SO"0%4J*' )8*,#>c&##& k& )4-08' 4ip4

Thus speaking he took his seat, and Telemachus embraced his dear father,
pouring tears of lamentation. And desire to weep arose in both of them, and they
wailed clearly, louder than birds, sea-eagles or vultures with hooked talons,
whose young hunters have stolen before they are fledged. Thus did they let fall

90
Knox (1952).
91
Heath (1999a) p. 20: The simile conjures up for different readers Agamemnon, Menelaus,
Helen, and Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Thyestes and his children.
92
Garner notes the elegant Aeschylean parallel with the paternal grief that the Iliadic Zeus will
face at the death of his son, Sarpedon, which immediately follows this simile. Garner (1990) p.
42.
109
pitiful tears from their brows and the light of the sun would have set upon them
lamenting, if Telemachus had not addressed his father all of a sudden.

As Fraenkel notes, the principal motif [of lamentation for lost offspring] clearly comes
from the Odyssey passage, but there the birds only lament in pain: the element of war-cry
is contributed by the Iliad.
93

The Homeric patrimony of this Aeschylean image is beyond dispute, but I would like
to suggest a third simile model which reveals a far richer engagement with Homeric
figurations of speech and which helps to explain the fourfold recurrence of the verb
across the parodos: the famous simile which marks the resumption of the narrative and
the return to battle following the catalogue of ships (3.1-9):
I-78 ()#W 5$,%O;#& z%' Y9#%$&#,,1& f54,-*1,
S8D#' %C& #I$==S -' (&*)` -' e,4& 8&1;#' '
-# )#8 #I$==T 9#8=&:& )0"#1 *I84&$;1 )8$
4o -' ()#W *]& J#1%D&4 >69*& 54W @;0,>4-*& %F8*&
#I$==S -4+ 9# )0-*&-41 +,' U#-$'&N& V&:>'
@&38=,1 s?9%4+*1,1 W*'&' #$. #@3$ W"3&0C$5
08141 3' [84 -4+ 9# 545R& Q8134 )8*>08*&-41.
* 3' [8' e,4& ,19` %0&#4 )&#+*&-#' UJ41*W
(& ;?% %#%4D-#' @"#P0%#& @""A"*1,1&.

And then when each side was arrayed with their commanders, the Trojans
marched forward with a shriek and cry just like birds, like the shriek of cranes in
the sky, who have fled the winter and unimaginable storms and fly with a shriek
from the flows of Ocean bringing death and doom to the men of the Pygmies and
from high in the air bring forward the evil strife. And so the Achaeans marched
forward in silence breathing might, eager in their breasts to come to each others
defense.

The passage employs the noun klang, a transparent cognate of the verb klaz,
94
to
compare the Trojans war-cries to the shrieks of birds. Like the parodos simile, the Iliad
3 simile offers a detailed picture of the circumstances and actions of the cranes the broad
outlines of which are not unlike those of the Atreidai as the Chorus describe them
departing for Troy.
95
The threefold repetition of the noun klang, which generates the

93
Fraenkel (1950) p. 29.
94
Not a great obstacle to adducing this passage as a model for Aeschylus, when one considers
that the Odyssey passage employs the synonym, 5"4+:.
95
Many scholars, ancient and modern, have sought to solve the mystery of the battle between the
cranes and the Pygmies. The best treatment is Muellner (1990).
110
strong perception of similitude in the Homeric model,
96
finds correspondence in the
repetition of the verb klaz throughout the parodos as a whole. Like the crane simile, the
point of comparison on which the parodos comparison hinged, namely the shouts of the
Atreidai who are described as shrieking (5"=y*&-#') like vultures, recurs at a number
of points throughout the Choruss song. It is used twice to describe the prophetic speech
of Calchas, first in the inquit frame which concludes his extended speech oratio recta
(156-9):
-*1=3# !="J4' Pd& %#9="*1' @94;*K' 2,"#I$=Q-'
%$8,1%' @)' /8&+;:& ~3+:& *e5*1' F4,1"#+*1'
-*K' 3' ~%$>:&*&
4o"1&*& 4o"1&*& #n)0, -E 3' #] &15=-:.

These were the fates from the traveling birds that Calchas shrieked out, together
with great goods, to the royal house. And in the same voice cry woe, woe, but let
the good prevail.

And again, following the Hymn to Zeus, when his speech is briefly reintroduced in oratio
obliqua before Agamemnon offers his response (198-204):
()#W 3C 54W )158*V
J#+%4-*' [""* %{J48
F81;6-#8*& )8$%*1,1&
%=&-1' (#I$=Q-' )8*>08:&
l8-#%1&, Z,-# J;$&4 F=5-
-8*1' ()158*6,4&-4' U-8#+-
34' 3=58? %R 54-4,J#K&

But when the seer shrieked to the leaders for another, graver means against the
harsh storm, calling upon Artemis, so that the sons of Atreus struck the earth with
their scepters but could not hold back their tears.

The verb klaz is not commonly used to describe verbal communication and its
application to Calchas speech imparts a bestial quality to his words,
97
a fact which
further integrates the embedded speaker into the figurative sphere of the initial similitude.
One effect of this echo, which serves to establish a close connection between the two

96
Silk (1974) p. 16.
97
Silk (1974) p. 18, Heath (1999b) p. 22, Schein (2009) p. 391. LSJ cites only two instances in
which the verb is used of articulate sound, both times in the parodos, at Ag. 174 and 201.
Interestingly, the verb is also found in the framing introduction to Cassandras speech in oratio
recta at Pindar Pae. 8a.10. Rutherford (2001) p. 235.
111
speeches of Calchas while at the same time creating a strong sense of distance between
the seer and his interlocutor, Agamemnon, is to bridge the digression from the main
narrative that is introduced by the Choruss Hymn to Zeus.
98
However, the Choruss
interjected prayer is also implicated in the patterning of shrieks through a further instance
of the key term of similitude within the Hymn to Zeus itself.
The Hymn to Zeus is throughout concerned with speech and communication,
beginning with a confession of aporia as to how to address Zeus: #n -$3 4I-D1 >+"*&
#-#I79"'>5, -*V-$ &1& ,3&C-''",>; (160-3). The theme dominates the entire first
strophe (*I5 QJ: )8*,#15=,41 5-".)
99
and is continued in the antistrophe in which the
Choruss refusal to narrate the events that took place before the ascendance of Zeus
(*I3C "0P#-41 )8W& X& 170) leads to another mode of invoking Zeus, now formulated in
generic terms (()1&+514), rather than according to nomenclature (and we may here be
reminded of the close connection between names and song genres in the dactylo-iambic
triad, discussed in the previous chapter). It is in this context that we once again find the
verb klaz: {&4 30 -1' )8*>8$&:' ()1&+514 5"=y:& 5-". (174). From within their
aporetic digression, the Chorus find themselves appropriating the enunciative stance of
their embedded speakers, employing the verb which characterized the speech of the
Atreidai and Calchas to find a voice suitable to the prayer they wish to utter (-1'
)8*>8$&:').
The repetition of the verb klaz throughout the parodos places the disparate voices of
the Choruss song into a dialogue of sorts, albeit often by highlighting the lack of actual
dialogue between speakers.
100
But the verb is also interwoven with voices from the
Homeric simile as it pivots between the sound of men and birds.
101
The act of comparison
between men and birds, which is already redoubled in the Iliadic passage by the presence

98
The fact that the Homeric simile is used at the conclusion of an extended interruption of the
narrative which is more firmly connected with the narrators indexical sphere (his retrospective
distance from the events is heavily emphasized in the invocation of the Muses at 2.485ff.) is yet
another way in which this passage from Iliad 3 is well suited to the Aeschylean context and its
analogous digression in the form of the Hymn to Zeus.
99
Fraenkel offers an excellent account of how these words reflect a live concern, rather than
being mere liturgical relics or ornament. Fraenkel (1950) ad loc.
100
Gould (1978) might call this a reflection of Aeschylus authorial voice, which subjugates
individual character to the thematic development of the drama as a whole. See also Lebeck
(1971).
101
On the structural analogy of bird omens and similes in Homer, see Bushnell (1982).
112
of the andres Pygmaioi within the similes vehicle, is first made explicit in the parodos
through the formal structure of an extended simile which draws a direct comparison
between the shouts of the Atreidai and those of vultures (5"=y*&-#' l8O -8$)*&
4n9?)1D&).
102
But Aeschylus soon shifts his comparison into the metaphorical mode,
employing the verb klaz and its cognates to imbue his human speakers with a degree of
animalistic inarticulacy which is at odds with the verbal expressions to which the verb is
applied. The Homeric precedent enables us to see beyond these discrete metaphoric
resonances, to understand how the repetition of the verb following the initial simile unites
the embedded speakers of the parodos in a metaphoric similitude akin to that of extended
Homeric simile. This translation of repetition, from simile to metaphor, allows us to hear
the nascent strains of reperformance in the Homeric patterning of the noun klang across
the simile. Homer has already offered a model of the scriptory reduplication of voices in
the polyphony of his extended simile. But more importantly, the allusion recasts the
entirety of the parodos as a meditation on the interchangeability of voice across time and
space.
The extension of the Homeric model throughout the parodos is also apparent in the
way that Aeschylus exploits the crane similes sophisticated internal shift, moving from
the initial tenor the screams of the Trojan host (S8D#' %C& 5"499`) to a very
different final tenor the silence of the Achaeans (* 3' [8' e,4& ,19` UJ41*W). This
type of shift, carried out across the vehicle, is one of the most dynamic features of
Homeric simile, one that is not present in either of the traditionally adduced Homeric
models, but is taken up in the Aeschylean simile, where the second tenor (*g-: 3
U-80:' )4K34' ~ 58#+,,:& () U"#P=&38:1 ,"9,-5 Q"'5&) X-Y) )*"?=&*8*' @%>W
9?&415$' 60-2) is directly inspired by the divine theme with which the vehicle draws to
its close (g)4-*' 3 @+:& ^ -1' U)$"":& a s7& a X-Y) *n:&$;8**& 9$*& /P?F$4&
-D&3# %#-*+5:&, H,-#8$)*1&*& ,"9,-5 )484F<,1& 81&6& 55-9). Even more
compelling, to my mind, is the parallelism of the structure of the parodos as a whole
which mirrors the Homeric similes progression from cacophony to an unexpected,

102
Easterling also notes the Homeric resonances of Aeschylus specific choice of 4n9?)1*+ to
represent the birds of the simile: Easterling (1987) p. 56-7. There is a consistent and compelling
interest throughout the Oresteia in the formal feature of simile and similitude itself, beginning
with the watchmans self-description, 5?&E' 3+5O& (3).
113
inverted silence. The Homeric simile provides Aeschylus with a model for his many
voices, allowing him to connect the enunciations of the embedded speakers, and to
further interweave those with the voice of the Chorus, so that they find precedent in epic
verse and thus engage in a type of poetic reperformance even as they are themselves
mimetic reperformances. But there is a further voice within the Choruss song: that of the
doomed Iphigenia who, like the Achaeans at the close of the Iliad 3 simile, meets the
raucous polyphony of the preceding verses with an equally potent silence.
Agamemnons daughter enters the parodos once her father has accepted the brutal
necessity of her sacrifice. Although she never speaks in oratio recta, her appearance is
narrated with a strong focus on her capacity for speech.
103
The virgin is first described in
her attempt to escape her fate with prayers and supplications that are entirely disregarded;
her impotence in the face of her fathers decision is presented in terms of the
powerlessness of her speech (229-31):
I5%R) !Z #$. #I7!*'$) ,$%3[&0)
)48' *I3C& 4nD -# )48;0&#1*& 230
Q;#&-* >1"$%4J*1 F84F{'.

But the allies dear to the chief took no account of her prayers, her cries to her
father, and her virgin youth.

Iphigenias ineffectual imprecations cannot properly be classed as indirect speech, as her
utterances are presented only as objects (like herself, the 3$%:& [94"%4 208) of the
Greek soldiers scorn.
104
The formal suppression of Iphigenias words in contrast to the
polyphony of the earlier voices is echoed in their futility within the narrative sphere, a
dynamic which will characterize the remaining account of the voiceless virgins sacrifice.
The effort to silence Iphigenia is soon made an explicit subject of the narrative, as
Agamemnon resorts to force in order to ensure a more literal stifling of his daughters
speech. The Choruss graphic depiction of the forcible restraint of the young girl
comprises the remainder of their account of Iphigenias death. In a continuation of the
initial fusion of voice and self, the violent muzzling (F+t J4"1&D&) is the only physical
harm that the Chorus relate. Iphigenia is one with her voice. Even a cursory glance at the

103
Bonanno (2006) p. 200.
104
On the objectification of Iphigenia, see Scodel (1996), Wohl (1998) pp. 67-82, Sailor and
Stroup (1999) pp. 155-6.
114
proportion of the passage devoted to questions of speech reveals the consistent focus on
the verbal aspect in framing Iphigenias fate. Her forced silence is set against
Agamemnons own continued speech ()4-R8 %#-' #IJ7& 232), by contrast she must rely
on visual signals to convey her now muted pleas for mercy (@)' %%4-*' F0"#1
>1"*+5-L 241). Her silence is described as conspicuously visual ()80)*?,4 -v' (&
=3$W$N) 242) and contrasted with her speech in a still more distant past, when Iphigenia
sang with joy at her fathers table. The graphai to which Iphigenias silence is compared
are almost universally translated as paintings,
105
following from the visual emphasis in
the preceding lines. But this reading of the term, which recurs in a similar context in the
speech of Iphigenias doublet Cassandra,
106
overlooks the other common meaning of
written document or text, a sense which fits well the poetic theme of the subsequent
lines: ()#W )*""=51' )4-8E' 54-' @&38D&4' #I-84)0y*?' Q%#"p#& (243-5). The
contrast, then, is between the past poetic performance and the present silencing of song in
textual form. Iphigenias voice is no longer her own (as indeed, she is but a shadow cast
on the stage by the Choruss melic narrative). The scenes of her earlier paeanic
performance represent an idealized isomorphism of coding- and receiving time, but now
her speech is fixed in graphai, held frozen in the past by the Choruss refusal to
reperform her words. Iphigenias silence is marked as unusual, and unnatural a
corrupted state akin to that of her perverted sacrifice.
107
But another kind of written
voice, now pushing ironically into the plays internal future, can be heard in
Agamemnons zeal to restrain Iphigenias speech lest it bring a curse upon his house
(237). The silencing of the virgin sacrifice has not in fact deprived her voice of power
since her unspoken cries for vengeance will indeed by heard, as the events of the tragedy
will reveal, by her mother, Clytemnestra.
Like the silent Achaeans at the close of the crane simile, Iphigenias marked non-
speech inverts the polyphonous sound-scape that the parodos has hitherto developed by

105
On which, see the excellent treatment of O'Sullivan (2008) pp. 173-80. On the broader
emphasis on visual artworks in the Agamemnon, see Fletcher (1999b), Mitchell-Boyask (2006),
also Steiner (1995).
106
This second usage is discussed at greater length below. The term 984>A and its cognates are
used with some degree of frequency in Aeschylus with reference to writing. On the general use,
see Easterling (1985) p. 4, and below, chap. 6.
107
Zeitlin (1965).
115
offering a negative figuration of the speeches that have come before. The language of this
final section resonates with the themes and motifs of the previous speakers, allowing
Iphigenia to stand as a silent capstone to the parodos as a whole. The fact that Iphigenias
erstwhile songs are expressly stated to have been paeans (-81-$,)*&3*& #})*-%*&
)41D&4) places the girl alongside the two other singers of paeans in the parodos,
Clytemnestra and Calchas, as a speaker with command of a generic register that is
inaccessible to the Chorus. Like Calchas, she meets Agamemnon as her unresponsive
interlocutor, and she shares the seers ability to speak to a future audience. But in the
circumstances that meet her at Aulis, she is also a doublet for the Chorus. Her age (4nD
-# )48;0&#1*&) and voiceless strength (@&463L %0&#1) recall the Choruss claim, in that
key passage, that their age (,6%>?-*' 4nc&) still permits them to sing the Argive might
(5681$' #n%1 ;8*#K& N31*& 58=-*') relying on their own battle-strength of song
(%*")<& @"5=&).
108
The virgins silence seems to derive from the same source that
provides the Chorus with their verbal power. Yet conversely, Iphigenia also shares what
we might call the Choruss verbal impotence, and the pitiful effect of her unrealized
desire to address the soldiers (,3&C-''",-5' ;0"*?,') echoes back through the Choruss
own uncertainty earlier in the ode as how to address Zeus (#n -$3 4I-D1 >+"*&
5#5"O%0&:1, -*V-$ &1& ,3&C-''",>;). Both fail in their apostrophes; the virgin is
unable to find an interlocutor amongst the Argive host as the Chorus cannot find a way to
invoke the god.
Most notably, Iphigenia and the Chorus are fused by the parallel, performatively
simultaneous but chronologically distinct, silencing of their speech. The description of
Iphigenias silence serves as an introduction to the Choruss own refusal to narrate her
death. The Chorus break off their account before they reach the ultimate violence which
the girls forced muzzling anticipates, allowing Iphigenias silence to stand as the
metonymic narration of her death. In describing how she has been rendered mute, they
can themselves remain silent about the true end of her voice and her life (248-9):
-7 3' Q&;#& *}-' #i3*& *}-' (&&0):
-0J&41 3C !="J4&-*' *I5 [584&-*1.


108
%*")<& @"5=&, though highly corrupt, is the reading accepted by most modern editors.
116
The things which then took place I neither saw nor will I speak; the arts of
Calchas were not unfulfilled.

The final contrast between the Choruss silence and Calchas (now fulfilled) prophecy
substitutes for a narration of the girls death, locating her fate within the plane of
temporal destabilization created by the dialogue between the Chorus and the voice of the
embedded seer. And as the Chorus attempt to justify their position, they seek to articulate
their discomfort with prophetic speech. They spurn the special temporal insight of the
prophet and reject knowledge of the future before it has come, equating prophecy, in a
famously difficult construction, with what has been the choral attempt at its antithesis,
namely lamentation (251-3):
-E %0""*&
()#W 90&*1-' & 5"6*1' )8E J4180-:
e,*& 3C - )8*,-0&#1&.

The future, may you hear it when it comes. Before then, let it be gone, for [not to
do so] is the same as to bewail it in advance.

But what is this future to which the Chorus refer? Their own narrative silence looks only
to the past, to fates which have already been sealed but continue to work upon the present
and future. Their song has brought the past events of Aulis too jarringly into the present,
as if the words spoken then, and the deeds then done, were being played out once again,
reperformed and reenacted by the Chorus, as indeed they are.
Although Aeschylus manipulation of the Homeric simile is not a literal quotation, it
represents a sophisticated allusive interface with the language and structure of one of
Homers most compelling depictions of the nature of the voices embedded within his
epics. The allusion permits the playwright to draw upon his epic predecessor and to make
use of Homers narrative voice in order to establish a basic foundation for the internal
reperformances of the parodos to be analogized to poetic reperformance more broadly.
Like Pindar, Aeschylus looks to Homers inquit formulae and to the speeches of his epic
heroes to guide his own practice of quotation. But in the parodos we find a further level
of modeling through the elegant and concerted reformulation of one of Homers most
affecting depictions of human enunciation. The tragic poet repurposes the epic simile,
first signaling its formative influence on the Choruss song through the unmistakable epic
117
resonances of the odes opening simile, and then exploring the implications of the
similitude as he traces it through the speeches which the Chorus impersonate on the
stage. The polyphony of past voices within the parodos is framed by Homers words,
emphasizing that each of the Choruss quotations is itself an act of poetic reperformance.
Nor do the Chorus themselves remain untouched by the force of this rhapsodic modeling,
but as their voice and verbal authority become increasingly fused with that of their
embedded speakers, their own song too becomes a reperformance that is transported
through the multiplicity of time and space created by its internal polyphony.

3. THE MANTIS SPEAKS
Homers epics provide Pindar and Aeschylus not only with ready words for quotation but
with a model for the dynamics of their own scriptory poetics. By embedding the voice of
Homer within their own compositions, our poets are able to signal the importance of
understanding poetry as a reperformative activity. The voices of their songs, like those of
Homer, are spatially and temporally mobile, making use of the powers of the script to
bring themselves to life in remarkable ways. These moments of quotation point to the
presence of Homers scriptory epics within the choral poems of Pindar and Aeschylus.
But to fully reveal the scriptory mechanisms that they have themselves created, our poets
cannot rely on the model of the epic poet alone. They must establish the presence of their
own scripts, and show themselves to be as capable of their epic forebear of traveling
across space and time.
It is the mimetically generative capacity of apostrophe that permits our poets to most
dynamically reveal their works as grounded in multiple spatio-temporal realities, but
joined through the unifying power of the script. Through its power to mediate between
the multiple contextual realities of a poetic work, the script serves as a point of fixity and
unity within the broader polyphony of scriptory mobility. The use of apostrophe
establishes a clear relationship between these disparate points, binding, but also calling
into relief, the unspoken mechanisms that unify a scriptory poem. Apostrophe takes up
the complex spatio-temporal landscape sketched by oratio recta and puts it to work. Its
mimetic force places the multiple vision of a scriptory hic et nunc before our eyes,
staging the scriptory matrix for all to see. In the two readings that follow, we will see
118
how Pindar and Aeschylus deploy this apostrophic stance to help demarcate the role of
script, using the silent figures of apostrophe to tacitly shape the voices that we hear
within their songs.
We turn first to Pindars Isthmian 8, a poem whose understated sophistication is often
overlooked, but which provides a fine example of how Homers epic model is
transformed by the apostrophic voice of melos to signal the full range of Pindars
scriptory poetics. The poems central narrative excursus draws on Homeric epic to
destabilize the performative hic et nunc. The myth itself is presented through a complex
series of spatio-temporal dislocations, as Achilles fame is viewed proleptically through
the lens of his parents marriage,
109
or more accurately, through the divine orchestration
of that union. The events are in fact the prophetic vision of Themis, vividly related in
oratio recta as the goddess advises Zeus and Poseidon against their erotic designs on the
Nereid Thetis. In addition to its epic theme, the passage is perfused with Homeric
language, producing a remarkably dense allusive web across the brief narrative.
110
But it
is the way in which Pindar embeds this reperformance of the Homeric text within his own
that most concerns us here.
The framing structure in which Pindar sets Themis oratio recta is remarkable even if
we take account of dynamic nature of direct speech in Pindar. The goddesss speech is
introduced by an unmistakable inquit formula (#i)# 3' #}F*?"*' (& %0,*1,1 r0%1' And
wisecounceling Themis spoke amongst them. 31),
111
but after having signaled the
beginning of an embedded speech the poet continues to relate Themis words in oratio
obliqua, mediating her prophecy through his own, still clearly audible narrative voice. It

109
In this respect, Pindar anticipates the elegant narrative structure of Catullus 64.
110
Themis speaks in words associated with hexameter epic: /)=y:, ,-#8*)A, [>;1-*',
(99?4"+y:. Particularly noteworthy is the use of the adjective (&4"+951*' to facilitate her
description of Achilles. The term is regularly used in hexameter similes (there are 26 instances in
Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns) but is not found elsewhere in Pindar and rarely occurs outside of
the hexameter tradition. Here it is employed within an obvious reference to hexameter epithet
forms, i,*' l8Oq, and )$34' 5d' UJ1""#6'/ )*3=85O' 3K*' UJ1""#6', bringing the epic
borrowing into even sharper focus. (The formula )$34' 5d' UJ1""#6' is mentioned by the
scholia vetera in reference to Pindars description of Achilles youthful speed in N.3.51-3, where
an explicit allusion is made to the epic tradition: 5-#+&*&-' ("=>*?' [&#? 5?&D& 3*"+:& ;'
j850:& )*,,W 978 58=-#,5#. "#9$%#&*& 3C -*V-* )8*-08:& Q)*' QJ:.)
111
The Pindaric phrasing resembles the Homeric line formula: N ,>1& (d >8*&0:& @9*8A,4-*
54W %#-0#1)#& (Il. x9, Od. x7).
119
is with some sense of delay, then, that Themis begins her true oratio recta some five lines
later, and the tension between the framing voice of the poet and that of his embedded
speaker is brought into focus at this belated moment of dictional transition. Themis first
words interrupt the poet with a bold imperative: @""7 -7 %0& )46,4-# But now you
stop these things (36). Her words are notionally directed at Zeus and Poseidon, and refer
to their erotic furor over the young Thetis, but Themis address also curtails Pindars
speech. As such, the brusque apostrophe which begins her true oratio recta can (despite
the plural)
112
be understood as addressed to the poet, the framer of her embedded speech,
as much as to the gods who inhabit her mythical hic et nunc. Her words serve to wrest her
voice from the mediated narration of the poet into the clear hic et nunc of direct speech.
113

The dislocation of the poet is thus actively effected by his embedded speaker, who
mimetically apostrophizes the voice that enables her vocal apparition. Themis injunction
insists, in effect, that Pindar set aside his own script in favor of Homers.
The scriptory force of Themis apostrophe, producing a kind of parallel dialogue
between Pindar and his Homeric exemplar, can only be fully appreciated in the broader
context of Pindars ode, in which the melic poet has continually employed apostrophe to
establish the complex spatio-temporal mobility of his own composition. Throughout the
poem Pindar creates a web of contradictory apostrophes and emphatic first-person
statements that constantly reposition the poetic hic et nunc, calling attention to the spatio-
temporal relationship between performance and composition. In so doing, Pindar reveals
the scriptory nature of his poem, pointing to the multiple realities contained within its
multiform structure. The effect of revealing this scriptory matrix is most clearly discerned
in the odes opening strophe (1-8):
!"#=&38L -1' _"15+t -# "6-8*& #}3*P*&, &0*1, 54%=-:&
)4-8E' @9"4E& S#"#,=8J*? )487 )8$;?8*&
nv& @&#9#180-:
5D%*&, ,;%1=3*' -# &+54' [)*1&4, 54W #%0t
@0;":& N-1 58=-*' (P#V8# -D 54W (9c, 54+)#8 @J&6%#&*' 5
;?%$&, 4n-0*%41 J8?,04& 54"0,41
|*K,4&. (5 %#9=":& 3C )#&;0:& "?;0&-#'

112
In fact, in the context of choral performance, the plural would easily be understood as an
address to the group of singers.
113
As Burnett (2005) has noted, Themis is granted a remarkable degree of control, governing
even the cosmic order of the poem, p. 114.
120
%A-' (& /8>4&+t )0,:%#& ,-#>=&:&,
%A-# 5=3#4 ;#8=)#?# )4?,=%#&*1 3' @)8=5-:& 545D&
9"?56 -1 34%:,$%#;4 54W %#-7 )$&*&

For your agemate Kleandros, o young men, let one of you go to the shining gate
of his father Telesarchos and rouse the revelries, an honorable recompense for
his toils and reward for his Isthmian victory, and since he was best in the contests
at Nemea. And likewise I, although pained in my heart, must call upon the golden
Muse. Freed from great sorrows, let us not fall into a lack of crowns, nor should
you offer service to troubles. Bringing an end to our intractable ills, let us sing a
sweet tune even after toil.

The ode oscillates between two discordant points, the vivid polyphony of a performative
hic et nunc and the solitary event of Pindars poetic composition. Unseen, but readily felt,
between the two lies the poems fixed script, linking the contradictory perspectives
through the unity of their single song.
The apostrophe to the unspecified band of neoi in the first lines turns our gaze first to
the poems sense of its own performance. The geographic specification, locating the
event at the victors home, points to an even more circumscribed vision of the song; we
are asked to imagine the moment of its premiere recital, the first time that the poets
script was translated into living song.
114
Yet the poets command indicates a
postponement of this event: the direction to the young men assumes that they have not
yet begun to sing.
115
There is then a sense of anticipation, a hint that the songs
performance is not yet underway, which exposes the distance between the script and its
oral instantiation. Although Pindar avails himself of the idea of the script, it is not
primarily to the possibility of untold future reperformances that this scriptory perspective
directs us, but backwards, to the point in time before the poem has found its first voice in
song.
Pindar follows up on this his initial, paradoxically retrospective, apostrophic
injunction to his band of performing neoi with an even more decisive consideration of his
own compositional role in the poems construction. Pindar compares his task to that of
the youthful chorus (-D 54W (9c), but his desire is not to rouse the komos but to invoke

114
Cf. Morrisons terminological distinction between primary, secondary, and tertiary
performances of Pindars work. Morrison (2007) esp. pp. 19-23.
115
D'Alessio (2004) p. 289, Carey (1989b).
121
the Muses as inspiration for his song. The poets emotional reference to his own suffering
heart places emphasis on his isolation from the performers whom he has just addressed.
116

Pindar is not yet present within the performative hic et nunc. We have moved backwards.
The poems first sentence seemed to anticipate the songs immediate performance, but
now, with divine inspiration yet to be requested, we must await the poets act of
composition as well.
As the poem progresses, the hic et nunc of Pindars addresses becomes more difficult
to locate. He shifts first to a first-person plural that can be understood to group him either
with the Muses, in the ambit of his poetic composition, or with the neoi whose presence
signals the commencement of the poems reception. He describes his unnamed
companions as freed from great suffering, connecting the thought to the distress that
Pindar has just claimed attended his poetic composition (@J&6%#&*' ;?%$&). But
mention of the need for crowns (,-#>=&:&) evokes the attendant circumstances of the
poems premiere.
117
This uncertain temporality is intensified in the following clause
which, despite its clear formal and thematic parallels to the preceding command, is
shifted markedly by the use of the second-person singular: %A-# 5=3#4 ;#8=)#?#. It has
been suggested that Pindar uses the second person here to address himself,
118
as
elsewhere he speaks to his thumos as a participant in his compositional choices.
119
But
such clarity is not afforded by the passage under consideration, particularly in light of the
subsequent return to the first-person plural within the context of an unmistakably
performative command: 9"?56 -1 34%:,$%#;4 (8). The apostrophe must, therefore,
also admit of an external interlocutor, conceived as a participant in the performance of
the song.
The dynamic instability of these opening lines, which never fully inhabit an
identifiable hic et nunc, has the effect of displacing the song from all of its possible
instantiations and thus places the entire weight of the poems integrity, both performative

116
On the personal tone of the first-person claims in this poem, see Lefkowitz (1963) and, for a
slightly revised assessment, Lefkowitz (1980). I treat the question of Pindars biographical
tradition with relation to this poem at greater length in Uhlig (forthcoming).
117
Cf. Steiner (1993) p. 163.
118
Lefkowitz (1963).
119
Cf. O.1.4, O.2.89, P.3.61-2, N.3.26-8; discussed by Pelliccia (1995) pp. 282-55, and with
slightly less force by Sullivan (2002).
122
and compositional, on the presence of the silent script. The untenable paradox of the
poems spatio-temporal polyphonies can only be resolved through the sense that the
poets apostrophes are grounded in a traveling reality, the fully mobile hic et nunc of the
scriptory text. This almost fully mimetic scene represents the true dynamism of the poem,
which is able to contain any number of competing realities within its scriptory poetics.
And it is this breadth of voice, the scriptory poems ability to readily contain its own
contradictions, that will be mirrored and enacted in the anachronistic dialogic exchange
between Pindar and Themis.
The deep structural symmetry between epinician frame and embedded myth is
signaled by the unusual nature of the poets final apostrophe before beginning the Themis
narrative, which is addressed to the nymph Aignia as a character within the mythic past:
CZ !' +) '\C&' mn&*)+4& (&#95v& 5*1%<-*, 3K*& Q&;4 -05#' n45E& F48?,>48=9L
)4-8W 5#3&$-4-*& ()1J;*&+:&. But carrying you off he set you down on that island,
Oinopia, where you bore shining Aiakos, the mortal most beloved to his loud-thundering
father. (21-3). It is uncommon for Pindar to make use of this type of apostrophe, often
found in Homer, which transgresses the boundary between the hic et nunc of the
narrators present and the world of the distant past his words depict. And Pindar calls
attention to his bold formulation by the emphatic placement of the second-person address
at the beginning of the new strophe. Here the shift in register is undoubtedly inspired in
part by the epic coloring that will soon dominate the ode. But more significantly, the
unexpected incursion of the apostrophe into the mythical sphere is a signal of the
important relationship between the dictional figurations within the epic narrative and
Pindars own melic voice within the framing stanzas. The interpenetration is further
supported by the subtle interweaving of Pindars claim that (even) the gods have heard of
the fame of the Aiakids of which the poet is himself now singing: -4V-4 54W %45=8:&
+9"9'$'%' @9*84+ (26). The anachronistic conceit, that the poets song informs the gods
(of the past) as much as theirs do his, is reaffirmed by Themis later admission that she
knows of Peleus virtue through report (>=-1'). The expression is out of keeping with
Themis omniscient stance, almost as though the poet forgets who is speaking and for
123
the moment speaks for himself,
120
revealing his voice to have traveled, following the
course of his apostrophe, into embedded narrative; into the world of the myth and the
powerful prophetic voice of Themis.
Apostrophe allows Pindar to reveal the spatio-temporal instability of his ode, not as a
failure, but as a mark of its command of scriptory poetics. Here too Themis is a model for
his scriptory vision. That Pindar can share her voice, indeed allow her to fully inhabit the
hic et nunc of his song, is mark of his scriptory understanding and prowess: by
embedding her song, he shares with Themis her remarkable vocal power. As Pindar
asserts in the concluding frame following her speech, the fruit of Themis words did not
perish (44-8):
' >=-* !8*&+341'
(&&0)*1,4 ;#= -*W 3' ()W 9"#>=8*1' 45
&#V,4& @;4&=-*1,1& ()0:& 3C 548)$'
*I 54-0>;1&#. >4&-W 978 P6&' @"09#1&
54W 9=%*& r0-1*' [&45-4, 54W &#487& Q3#1P4& ,*>D&
,-$%4-' @)#+8*1,1& @8#-7& UJ1"0*'

So spoke the goddess to the sons of Kronos. Nor did the fruit of her words perish,
for they say that the lord considered the common good in the marriage of Thetis,
and the mouths of the wise revealed the youthful excellence of Achilles to the
ignorant.

The closing frame of the inquit formula is, like the introduction to Themis speech,
emphatically Homeric, but now the language echoes the relatively common invocation of
the epic muse, Q&&#)# |*V,4, joining it, and Themis, with the thea of the first line of
the Iliad and imbuing the goddesss words with the inspirational power of the epic Muse.
That this epic allusion is indeed meant to signal a special appreciation of the poetically
productive power of Themis words is made clear by the fuller articulation which
follows. The narrator claims that Themis words have given rise to mortal report or
better, to a poetic tradition of Achilles valor which is borne on the mouths of the wise
(,*>D& ,-$%4-4).
121
Like the figuration of Homer in Isthmian 4, Themis words look to

120
Farnell (1930) ad loc.
121
It is possible to see a further hexameter exemplar if we note the specificity of these lines,
which refer to the &#487& @8#-7& UJ1"0*' which will be revealed to the @)#+8*1,1&. The
reference is not to Achilles life in general, but to his early exploits, the very adventures that
Themis mentions at the close of her speech, when she commands that Chiron be told the news in
124
the future, not just in their prophetic content, but in their power to inspire song in men to
come. Like the Muses, Themis is able to direct her prophetic words to multiple audiences
at once, a feature which Pindar explores through the pairing of thematic and formal
devices which reveal the full compass of her influence.
As Apollo did in Olympian 6, Themis will also exert control over the ode itself long
after the hic et nunc reality of her words has been obscured. Following the goddesss
speech, the poet continues to narrate the epic feats of Achilles, maintaining the Homeric
tone that Themis words have introduced into the poem. Not only does the language of
the narrator retain its strongly epic character, but he makes clear reference to the epic
tradition surrounding the hero, offering an overview of the many hexameter poems that
told of the heros fate. Hesiods Hypothkai is already suggested by Themis own
words,
122
but in cataloguing the names of Achilles greatest foes Telephus, Memnon,
and Hector Pindar directly alludes to the three major epics recounting Achilles deeds,
the Cypria, Aetheopis, and Iliad.
123
But it is when the poet speaks of Achilles death that
he once again most clearly returns to his meditation on Themis role within his poem. For
death, Pindar asserts, was not end of Achilles glory since his grave was attended by the
immortal song of the Muses (56-8):
-E& %C& *I3C ;4&$&-' @*134W ()0"1)*&,
@""= * )48= -# )?87& -=>*& ;' "15c&141 )48;0&*1
,-=&, ()W ;8{&$& -# )*"6>4%*& QJ#4&.

Nor did the songs leave him when he was dead, but the Heliconian virgins stood
by his pyre and his grave and poured upon it a many-voiced lament.

The event described here has a double valence. On one level, the passage refers to the tale
(preserved in our extant sources by Od.24.43-84) that the Muses sang the dirge at
Achilles funeral.
124
But at the same time, Pindars language extends to comprise the
many-voiced reperformances of Achilles many poems, whose words and reperformances

his immortal cave: n$&-:& 3' (' [>;1-*& [&-8*& #I;d' G+8:&*' 4I-+5' @99#"+41 (41). The
reference points to the Hesiodic )*;{541 G#+8:&*', discussed at length in chap. 5.
122
n$&-:& 3' (' [>;1-*& [&-8*& #I;d' G+8:&*' 4I-+5' @99#"+41 (41). cf. Martin (1984),
Kurke (1990).
123
The common attribution of the whole of the Trojan and Theban Cycles to Homer in the fifth
century is discussed above, n. 78.
124
Burgess (2009) pp. 40-2.
125
are inspired by the same Muses whose first song for Achilles is here described.
125
The
singing continues long after Achilles mortal death, and indeed after Homers a double
reperformance that simultaneously restages the heros death and the epic verses which
invest it with poetic kleos.
As he transitions away from the Homeric narrative, Pindar appropriates the power of
the epic song for his own composition. The song of the Muses lives on in Pindar as he
once again bids his unnamed band of performers to raise their voices in celebration (61-
4):
-E 54W &V& >08#1 "$9*&, Q,,?-4+ -# |*1,4K*& z8%4 15*5"0*'
%&<%4 )?9%=J*? 5#"43{,41. 9#84+8#-0 &1&,
k' ,;%1*& & &=)*'
B:8+:& Q"4J#& ,#"+&:&

And even now the tale is carried forward, as the chariot of the Muses races to
sing a monument for the boxer Nikokles. Celebrate him, who took the Dorian
celery in the Isthmian grove.

Pindars apostrophe once again places his song within the hic et nunc of epinician
performance, but the words and power of the epic song has been incorporated into the
mobile voice of his scriptory song. Pindar demonstrates that his own apostrophes, like
that of Themis, can generate song and move the world of his performance through its
limitless possibilities. Within the broad-ranging landscape of his scriptory poetics, Pindar
can incorporate the voice of Homer with the multiform and capacious hic et nunc of his
scriptory composition.
It is with a similar interest in the scriptory properties of his own composition that
Aeschylus approaches the so-called Cassandra-scene of the Agamemnon. As we will see,
the scene recasts the complex spatio-temporal dynamics of the parodos in the rich
landscape of apostrophe, transferring the quotational stance of oratio recta into a fully
realized vision of Aeschylus mimetic script. Much as in Pindars Isthmian 8, the model
of the Homeric script, expressed in the allusive diction of oratio recta, is adapted to the
mimetic demands of the melic composition through the pointed use of apostrophe. The
many parallels between the two great lyric moments of the Agamemnon, the parodos and

125
As Fitzgerald notes, the Muses dirge also replaces the elided marriage song which the Muses
are said to have sung at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Fitzgerald (1987) pp. 8-9.
126
the Cassandra-scene, have long been noted. The two scenes are paired both in length and
in structural sophistication, and represent the two most significant reflections on the
dramatic action of the play.
126
But, as I hope to demonstrate, the connection between the
two scenes runs deeper, to the core of the Agamemnons exploration of its own scriptory
poetics within the parameters of dramatic mimesis.
There is a special quality to Cassandras role within the Agamemnon and the
Oresteia trilogy more broadly that has been variously attributed to the unique attributes
which characterize her position both within the internal dynamics of the drama and
within what may best be called the meta-theatrical structure of the play (understood as
those places where the drama seems to reflect on and expose its own theatrical nature).
As Bernard Knox observed in his incomparable essay Aeschylus and the Third Actor,
the singularity of Cassandras role within the Agamemnon is tied to her position as third
actor (-81-49:&1,-A'). The innovative status and unexpected appearance of a third actor
within Aeschylean drama maps on to the determined silence and subsequent idiosyncratic
speech of the young captive.
127
As the first, and most powerful instantiation of the third
actors extra voice, Cassandra is a flash-point in the trilogy where the formal features of
the dramas construction and performance are revealed and explored. Cassandras mantic
powers, deployed to spectacular effect in unsettling the hic et nunc of the dramatic stage,
represent an internal correlate to her uncertain role within the trilogys structure. As Knox
describes her, Cassandra interrupts the dramatic action blurs and almost suspends
dramatic time; in Cassandras possessed song the past, present, and future of
Clytemnestras action and Agamemnons suffering are fused in a timeless unity which is
shattered only when Agamemnon in the real world of time and space (which is also the
world of mask and stage) screams aloud in mortal agony.
128
As we will see, Cassandras
ability to enter into this timeless space is a direct reflection of the scriptory poetics that

126
The full parodos occupies a remarkable 220 lines (or 13% of the play) while the Cassandra
dialogue, the longest in the play, takes just over 250 lines (15%). As Goldhill notes, the similar
length of the scenes is matched by their corresponding importance. Goldhill (1984) p. 81.
127
Knox (1972). Knox links the special deployment of Cassandra as the third actor in the
Agamemnon to the other third actor figures in the trilogy: the abrupt, one-line role of Pylades in
the Choephoroi and finally Apollo himself in the Eumenides whose voice has been the motivation
behind the speeches of the previous two third actor characters.
128
Knox (1972) p. 114, Barrett (2007) pp. 268-70.
127
underlie the drama as a whole. Her special status lies in her unique access to the scriptory
realm that lies beyond the hic et nunc of the dramatic performance.
Cassandras visions create a time-scape akin to that of the embedded speakers of the
parodos. Both scenes are driven by the reperformance of moments from the past within
the hic et nunc of the dramatic stage. But unlike the Chorus, Cassandra looks both
backwards and forwards and, more importantly, because the mode of her engagement is
entirely mimetic and dialogic (that is, relying upon apostrophe rather than oratio recta)
she does more than simply import the past into the present, she moves the spatio-
temporal center of the stage with her every word. In what follows, we will explore this
imagined stage created by Cassandras apostrophic diction, and with it the figuration of a
fully mimetic scriptory poetics that it seeks to reveal. From her unique position, both
within the hic et nunc of the dramatic action and in the atemporal, unseen realm of
prophetic knowledge, Cassandra is able to disclose the unstable spatio-temporal nature of
the scriptory poem.
As noted in the previous chapter, the powerful role that apostrophe plays in the
Cassandra-scene is clear from the moment when attention is first drawn to Cassandras
silent presence on the stage.
129
Klytemnestras unreciprocated address to the captive sets
off not only the subsequent 35 lines of un-successful dialogue, but also the asymmetrical
dynamics of apostrophe that will govern the entire scene. Freed from the verbal demands
of the queen who has returned inside the house, Cassandra expresses her fear and
desperation to Apollo: /-*-*-*-*K )$)*1 3<. / )*""*& )*""*&. (1072-3). Despite
their erratic, disjointed tone,
130
Cassandras first words formally echo Klytemnestras
insofar as they, like the inaugural apostrophe, find no response. Unlike Clytemnestra,
however, Cassandra apostrophizes a silent addressee who is not even present on the
stage.
131
The mimetic asymmetry signals a new interest in the generative power of
apostrophe.

129
Taplin (1972) pp. 77-8. On the distinction between significant and insignificant silence, Taplin
(1972) pp. 57-8.
130
Taplin (1972) p. 73. Mazzoldi and others suggest that Cassandras first utterances should be
categorized as glossolalia, unintelligible speech which resembles coherent language. Mazzoldi
(2002) p. 146, with bibliography n. 5.
131
Robin Mitchell-Boyask makes the interesting suggestion that Cassandras words here, and her
subsequent invocations of Apollo, are addressed to a statue of the god which would have been
128
As they had in the face of Clytemnestras futile engagement of Cassandra, the Chorus
step in to fill the silent space, offering an interpretation of Cassandras words even as
they censure her combination of paean and threnos: -+ -4V-' @&:-$-?P4' @%>W
*P+*?; /*I 978 -*1*V-*' Z,-# ;8O&O-*V -?J#K&. Why do you cry ototo thus about
Loxios? For he is not such as to enjoy one who laments. (1074-5) Cassandra responds to
the Chorus by repeating her cries to Apollo verbatim, or rather, she does not respond to
the Chorus at all, but continues to address herself to the god.
132
The incompatibility of
their enunciations opens a spatio-temporal and in effect scriptory gap between the two
speaking figures. It is the first indication, one that will only become more emphatic, that
the plays speakers no longer appear to share the same space or to be engaged in the same
performance. While the Chorus vainly attempt to understand the (to them) unintelligible
parameters of her words, Cassandra engages in a dialogue with an unseen and unheard
interlocutor.
The dramatic disjunction is, as many have noted, beautifully reflected in the radical
formal structure of inverted epirrhematic amoibaion which finds Cassandras excited
lyric stanzas met by the Chorus in trimeters for the first portion of their exchange. The
inability of their voices to meet on any plane compounds the sense that they are not
engaged in the same performance, are not enacting the same script. Even in Cassandras
first brief utterances the power of the metrical contrast can be felt. Cassandras wholesale
repetition of her words draws attention to the rhythmic, almost incantatory, nature of the
captives cries and the already ritual force of the internal anaphora, )*""*&
)*""*&.
133
The redoubled doubling hints towards melos a suppliants refrain drawing
power out of each iteration. In the background stands the refrain from the parodos
(4e"1&*& 4e"1&*& #n)0, -E 3' #] &15=-:) with which Cassandras words share both their

present onstage. The attraction of this reading is undeniable. Were such visual component of the
skene implicated in Cassandras words, it would both heighten the meta-theatrical impact of the
scene itself as well (as Mitchell-Boyask notes) as offering a further link between Cassandra and
the figures in the trilogys subsequent plays, especially the Eumenides. Although Mitchell-
Boyask falls short of presenting a conclusive case in favor of such use of a stage prop in the
Oresteia, the presence of one would nevertheless be compatible with the claim that Cassandra
addresses someone who is not present onstage insofar as a sculpture does not represent an actor
with the ability to speak in response. Mitchell-Boyask (2006) pp. 285-90.
132
Knox (1972) p. 116 and more recently Pillinger (2009) p. 28. By contrast, Lebeck thinks that
Cassandras speech is internally directed, Lebeck (1971) p. 52.
133
Mazzoldi (2002) p. 146.
129
internal anaphora and their polarity of sentiment.
134
But where we may hear a nascent
song, the Chorus find a simple tautology, and although they reformulate the language of
their reaction in marked contrast to Cassandras identical expression the import of
their words remains the same, as they once again censure the Trojan princess for
dusphmia.
135

The spatial distance between Cassandra and the Chorus is the first aspect of the
scriptory rupture to explore. Cassandras initial invocation of Apollo is followed by two
fully apostrophic addresses in which she first blames the god for bringing her to her death
in Argos (1082, 1087). Together the apostrophes authenticate the sense, already evident
from her earlier exclamations, that Cassandra is engaged in a (one-sided) dialogue with
the god. But more than that, they confirm that Cassandras perceptions reach beyond the
limits of what the Chorus (and the external audience whose role they here closely mirror)
can discern. When Cassandra asks the god where he has brought her ( )*K )*-' ^9490'
%#; )8E' )*+4& ,-09O&; ah, to what end have you brought me? To what house? [1087]),
she signals that she has arrived onstage in the company of the god. She addresses her
words to him because she recognizes Apollo not the Chorus whose words meet hers in
the performative hic et nunc as her true interlocutor. The unseen space that Cassandra
shares with the divinity becomes the object of her inquiry as she questions the god about
their new location. And when she expands her accusations in the following stanza, her
evocative description of the house of Atreus signals the symbolic nature of the place
which she describes. The house, which Cassandra calls hated by the gods, complicit in
many things, murderous (1090-1), is not the literal location to which she had come but
her place in the narrative, in the script which she knows she is about to perform.
Cassandra and her unseen interlocutor inhabit a place which the Chorus cannot
understand. The Chorus insist that Apollo can only be addressed through proper, formal
measures (as they earlier turned their own prayers to Zeus), and they presume to answer

134
As Winnington-Ingram has argued, the ailinon refrain is of central importance for the
Cassandra Scene and, in a less concerted fashion, for the Agamemnon as a whole. Winnington-
Ingram (1954) pp. 26-7.
135
3' 4]-# 3?,>O%*V,4 -E& ;#E& 54"#K / *I3C& )8*,A5*&-' (& 9$*1' )484,-4-#K&. 1077-8.
Goldhill draws an elegant contrast between Cassandras true language of etymology and the
periphrastic epithets (*P+*?, -E& ;#E&) used by the Chorus. Goldhill (1984) p. 83.
130
her query about her location ()8E' -R& U-8#13D&) because they cannot see (literally as
well as figuratively) the real target of her words.
136

The Chorus can conceptualize Cassandras inspiration as an internalization of the
divine force which would invest Cassandra with the gods insight and thus become a kind
of unheard or undifferentiated oratio recta (%0&#1 -E ;#K*& 3*?"+t )#8 (& >8#&+. The
divine [spirit] remains although her mind is enslaved (1084)), but they cannot understand
her to be conducting a dialogue from which they are excluded. The marginal status of the
Chorus becomes a reflection on the scene itself, offering an internalized, yet distinct,
perspective on the dialogue which Cassandra is performing before their eyes. Their
separation from her, and from the scene in which she finds herself embedded, marks a rift
between the two performances. The Chorus have access to Cassandras song, but not to
the world of the script from which it emerges. They can see her performance, but they
cannot understand the unseen and unheard voices that motivate the words that they hear.
The Chorus recognize, are forced to recognize through Cassandras performative
apostrophes, this lack on their part; they are isolated from that latent element which
initiates Cassandras words, from the scriptory power that imbues the text with its
performative voice.
As Cassandra continues her apostrophic address to the god, she extends the aural and
visual range of the scene to which she alone is responding. At the same time, her
expanded vision begins to introduce a temporal dimension to her apostrophic drama. At
first Cassandras para-drama moves into the world of the past, tracing the misfortunes of
earlier generations of Pelopidai. Voices from the houses past greet her ears. She hears
the cries of murdered children, calling their woeful appearance before her a testimony
of their sufferings (%48-?8+*1,1 978 -*K,3' ()1)#+;*%41. / 5"41$%#&4 -=3# F80>O
,>497' / /)-=' -# ,=854' )8E' )4-8E' F#F8:%0&4'. I am persuaded by these
testimonies. These babes bewailing their slaughter, their cooked flesh devoured by their
own father [1095-7]).
137
As she gazes on the past horrors of the house, the earth stained

136
For Goldhill, the Choruss subsequent hyperbolic claim to speak truth ((9v "09: ,*1 54W
-=3' *I5 (8#K' p6;O 1089) only further reveals the distance between the Chorus and their
would-be interlocutor, the prophetess of Apollo. Goldhill (1984) p. 83.
137
The deictic force of -*K,3# indicates that Cassandras perception of the murdered children,
whether aural or visual, constitutes the testimonials to which she refers.
131
with gore and the slaughter of children,
138
Cassandras keen senses become clear to the
Chorus. They do not share her vision, nor do their words enter into a truly reciprocal
dialogue with her, but their prior knowledge of the scene enables them to confirm the
vision seen only by Cassandra (1093). The Chorus perceive Cassandras mantic power as
residing in her vision of events at which she was, is, or is not yet physically present; the
Chorus will later remark, echoing the Odyssean model that runs throughout the scene:
;4?%=y: 30 ,*?, / )$&-*? )084& -84>#K,4& @""$;8*?& )$"1& / 5?8#K& "09*?,4&,
Z,)#8 #n )48#,-=-#1'. I marvel at you, for being raised far across the sea in a foreign
city, you speak with authority, as if you had been present. (1199-1201).
139
But in truth,
Cassandra is present to witness the scene that she describes. Through her access to the
realm of the script, Cassandra is able to participate in the unseen world, stepping fully
into the hic et nunc reality of the feast of Thyestes. Her reperformance is fully mimetic,
and unlike the orationes rectae of the parodos, her apostrophic stance brings the past
figures into full three-dimensional presence before her; her visions have their own voices,
smells, and sounds fully perceptible to her, but hidden from the Chorus (and the external
audience). The outlines of Cassandras script may already be familiar to the Chorus, but
without access to the scriptory world she sees, they cannot become part of its mimetic
reality.
In the next stage of her spatio-temporal dislocations, Cassandra moves out of the past
and into the future. Now even the vague hopes that the Chorus may have had of
understanding her words are vanished. But to the audience, it becomes apparent that the
script on which she now relies is in fact that of the very play which she performs. The
unseen drama now permits Cassandra to look aghast upon her own death alongside
Agamemnon at the hands of Klytemnestra. As Klytemnestra and her murderous actions
appear on her unseen stage, the mantis speaks in interrogatives, trying to understand the
events that are unfolding: -+ )*-# %A3#-41; / -+ -$3# &0*& [J*' %094; %09' (& 3$%*1,1
-*K,3# %A3#-41 545$&, [>#8-*& >+"*1,1, 3?,+4-*&. What is being plotted? What is
this great new grief? A great evil is hatched inside this house, unbearable to kin,

138
Fraenkel rejects the idea that this second detail exclusively denotes the feast of Thyestes,
though this seems the most likely candidate. Fraenkel (1950) ad loc. See also, Neitzel (1985).
139
The key adjective of the Choruss verbal authority in the parodos, 5681*', is transferred to
Cassandra in the verb 5?8#K&.
132
impossible to heal (1100-3). Her words echo those that the distraught Chorus used to
describe their own worries about the future at the start of the third stasimon, which they
performed onstage before a still silent Cassandra: -+)-# %*1 -$3' (%)03:' / 3#K%4 5-".
140

The shared language signals a shift in Cassandras visions, from the unseen events and
people that haunt the past of the Agamemnons mimetic characters (and are thus
analogous to the Choruss parodos narrative) to the action of the drama at hand, albeit
still displaced from the hic et nunc perception of the Chorus. Cassandras words no
longer represent an alternative performance whose temporal and geographic movement
stands separate from the dramatic scene of the plays physical staging. Now she is
performing the Agamemnon itself, but in a way that, to paraphrase Knox, transcends the
limits of dramatic space and time.
141
Cassandra returns to the Choruss earlier perception
of dread, but also anticipates the future action of the play. She can see these future events
before her although she does not know how, or cannot bring herself to describe them
(1109). On her unseen stage, Cassandra can witnesses Klytemnestra, already engaged in
the brutal murders which she will soon perpetrate offstage, and in despair she addresses a
plaintive apostrophe to her unnamed killer: nv -="41&4, -$3# 978 -#"#K'; (1107). Before
the events transpire within the dramatic action, the prophetic Cassandra stands as witness
to the net and the bath, to Agamemnons fall at the hands of his knife-wielding wife just
as she was able to witness the testimony of the long-dead children of Thyestes. In a final,
undirected apostrophe (@<, n3*d n3*6 [1125]), Cassandra invites her audience (both on-
and offstage) to see before them the visions that she witnesses, to join with her in
lamenting her own impending death. But again, she is alone in her vision. And although
their own hic et nunc performance will soon catch up with the knowledge that Cassandra
has now gleaned from the atemporal script, the Chorus remain uncomprehending, their
reality locked into the spatio-temporal parameters of what they can see before them.
These murders, when they do take place, will themselves be hidden offstage. Neither
the Chorus nor the audience will truly see, as Cassandra herself insists they will
(()$p#,;41 1246), the deaths that comprise the plays central event. Only
Agamemnons disembodied cries will signal the violence that is taking place inside the

140
The ode is well treated by Scott (1969).
141
Knox (1972) p. 114.
133
house of Atreus. Cassandras proleptic description of the bloody murders is therefore also
the most vivid performance of the plays brutal climax.
142
Yet Cassandra does not offer
the only vision of the murders. After the events have been completed, Klytemnestra will
reperform them once again in her triumphant return to the stage following the murders
and attended by the dead bodies of her victims.
143
The drama thus mirrors the offstage
death with two twinned reperformances, paired proleptic and analeptic views on this
central missing action. Paired with Agamemnons offstage cries, the three iterations of
the event are united in their phantasmic apparition on the stage through voice alone
(Cassandras excited descriptions, Agamemnons cries of pain, and Clytemnestras
vaunting re-enactment), but they are distinguished by their temporal relationship to the
mimetic drama. Agamemnons cries from offstage claim identity with the hic et nunc of
the dramatic action whereas Cassandra (and somewhat differently, Clytemnestra) enacts a
meta-performance that both relies on and calls attention to the unseen script that guides
the action of the play.
Each representation of the murders offers a slightly different perspective on the
multiple worlds of the drama, opening an even greater gap through which the scriptory
mechanics of the performance can be understood. Cassandra is particularly well suited to
bring this dynamic into focus precisely because of the apostrophic nature of her
engagement with the script. Her embodied status and the implied embodiment of her
invisible interlocutors forces us to take seriously the claim that this alternate world is
possessed of a hic et nunc reality, albeit one which is able to occupy contradictory spatio-
temporal coordinates. In contrast to the oratio recta of the Chorus, who brought the
voices of the past onto the stage by acting as a surrogate for the real actors (in both senses
of the word) of the events at Aulis, Cassandra does not share her physical self with these

142
In Bassis words, whether we think of these missing visual data as constituted in the script or
the play in performance, they necessarily refer to what is not seen with the bodily eye and thus to
the priority (if not the primacy) of the script. Another way of putting the matter would be to say
that the grammar of the play (the structure of the plot) is in conflict with its rhetoric, that is, with
the scripts recurring references to an unfulfilled desire to see. Bassi (2005) p. 263.
143
Diggle (2005) describes Klytemnestras astonishing action replay: So there [Klytemnestra]
stands, with the axe in her hands, and the corpse of Agamemnon before her, lying in his bath,
shrouded in the robe, the fishing-net, as she calls it, with which she entwined him. And as she
speaks she re-enacts the murder. She murders him again in mime. We cannot see the murder as it
happens, because the conventions forbid that, but we can see it re-enacted after it has happened.
p. 216.
134
non-present figures so much as allow herself to be partially transported into the realm
script where these figures are always present. But through her apostrophic engagement
with the scriptory realm, this unseen reality is in turn reflected onto the hic et nunc of the
performative stage through Cassandras own embodied presence there.
Before the uncomprehending gaze of the Chorus, Cassandra becomes an embodied
reperformance of their parodos song as her own voice takes on the multiple roles that
they had impersonated: she is the prophetic Calchas, looking beyond what they can see
and assuming the authoritative narrative control to which they too lay claim; she is the
silent Iphigenia, the victim whose unspoken words become more powerful than those of
the men who do violence to her; she is Agamemnon as well, with whom she arrived
onstage and whose brutal fate she will soon share, considering the futility of agency
under the constraint of divine will; but most centrally, Cassandra adopts the voice of the
Chorus themselves, transmitting voices from beyond the physical plane of the stage to
create an unseen drama. But as Cassandras apostrophes demonstrate, this is not the
purely vocal drama of oratio recta but the fully embodied, dialogic exchange of the
dramatic stage.
In the second portion of Cassandras prophetic performance, when her expressions
shift away from the excited apostrophes of her lyric outbursts, we find that a further layer
of signification is added to this already complex meditation on scriptory poetics.
Cassandras trimeters are in a sense a reperformance of the song that she has just brought
to an end. The formal transition is marked by the mantis herself, who promises that she
will now reveal her prophecy more clearly:
144
54W %R& ~ J8O,%E' *I50-' (5
54"?%%=-:& Q,-41 3#3*85v' &#*9=%*? &6%>O' 3+5O& [] >8#&c,: 3' *I50-' (P
4n&19%=-:&. Now no longer will my prophecy be glimpsed through veils like a newly
married virgin no longer will I speak in riddles. (1178-83).
145
Cassandra proves to be
her own best interpreter, making good on the Choruss remark, even before she began to

144
And likewise, unwittingly, by the Chorus whose inability to comprehend Cassandras end
point -08%4 3' @%OJ4&D (1177) combines the road imagery and ideas of telos that have been a
consistent theme of the play with a meta-textual reflection on the formal shift that the scene is
about to make.
145
The imagery here has often been linked to Iphigenias representation in the parodos, not to
mention Helens in the second stasimon. See the discussion in Mitchell-Boyask (2006) p. 279
with bibliography.
135
speak, that she would need a hermneus toros.
146
In her interpretive guise, Cassandra
replays the scenes that she has just lived through, now without the dramatic apostrophe
that erected a boundary between the Chorus and her scriptory visions.
147
As the scriptory
spectacle continues to take place before her eyes, Cassandra again invites the Chorus to
share in her visions,
148
now attempting to describe what she knows and directing her
words to the Chorus rather than to her unheard interlocutors within the parallel drama.
Yet Cassandras strong apostrophic stance is not entirely lost, it is merely redirected
towards the physical trappings of her mantic state her priestly garb which is clearly
visible to both Chorus and audience:
149

-+ 3{-' (%4?-{' 54-490":-' QJ: -=3#,
54W ,5{)-84 54W %4&-#K4 )#8W 308b ,-0>O;
,C %C& )8E %*+84' -{' (%{' 314>;#8D.
e-' (' >;$8*& )#,$&-4 9' 3' @%#+F*%41.
[""O& -1&' l-O' @&-' (%*V )"*?-+y#-#. (1264-8)

Why do I still hold on to this [adornment] that mocks me, this scepter and the
prophets garland around my neck? I destroy you now before my own fate
arrives; go to your doom. Thus I answer your fall [with my own]. May you enrich
another in my place with your madness.

The action visible, physical and present upon the stage stands in contrast to the
permutations of Cassandras unseen experience. She has revealed the unseen script that
lies beneath the dramatic performance. Now she can show how her own physical
presence on the stage is merely a manifestation of this larger scriptory realm. Her
apostrophe to her priestly adornments places the material reality of the performative hic
et nunc within the same spatio-temporal uncertainty that governed the unseen realm of
the script. Cassandra shows that she can travel with the unstable world of the para-drama

146
1062-3: j8%O&0:' Q*15#& Y P0&O -*8*V 3#K,;41. On which, see Goldhill (1984) p. 83, Hall
(1989) pp. 117-8, Morgan (1994) pp. 124-5.
147
As Pillinger notes, Cassandra suffers a peculiar kind of detachment and splitting of the self,
one part of which is faithful to the spirit of the original composition, one of which is committed to
reframing it for a new audience. Pillinger (2009) p. 19
148
%48-?8#K-# 1184, ~8<-# 1217, n3*d 1269.
149
The one exception is the brief apostrophe to Apollo directly before this act, which provides a
foil against which to understand the dynamically re-configured apostrophic stance that now
engages only with what is physically present on the stage.
136
even while positioning herself unambiguously within the real world of the dramatic
action.
Cassandras trimeter reperformance also reveals a scriptory aspect of her mantic
experience that had not fully come to light in the course of the melic drama: namely her
ability not only to experience the full script of the Agamemnon the play in which she
appears but of the entire Oresteia trilogy, although her role on the stage will soon be
over. Cassandras excited melic performance reflected her scriptory access to the central
event of the Agamemnon, her brutal murder alongside the Argive king. But as her
extended meditations in trimeter demonstrate, her special prophetic comprehension of the
drama of which she forms but a part stretches further as fitting with her transcendent
position as tritagonist through the full range of the plays development. We can see this
extended scriptory insight most clearly in Cassandras description of the chorus of Furies
perched atop the house of Atreus. As Frontisi-Ducroux notes, the image not only reflects
the inescapable legacy of the familys inherited guilt, but conjures the singing Furies who
will comprise the Chorus of the trilogys final play.
150
The representation of the Furies,
who slowly emerge throughout the first two plays before their fully embodied appearance
at the bidding of Clytemnestras shade at the beginning of the Eumenides, is one of the
most complex and sustained figurative themes in the trilogy. Like the speaking
tritagonists, the physical arrival of the Furies is an unexpected event within the drama.
When they finally emerge in their fully embodied horror,
151
the avenging spirits have so
long remained a silent and unseen presence within the trilogy that their arrival, like
Cassandras speech, represents an unexpected incursion of the world of the script into the
hic et nunc dramatic performance.
152
Cassandras anticipatory perception of the Furies

150
Frontisi-Ducroux (2007). The performative, and particularly dramatic character of the
Eumenides Chorus is explored in relation to the preceding action (though not specifically in
relation to the Cassandra-scene) by Prins (1991).
151
The ancient biographical tradition tells of how the physical appearance of the Furies, conjured
by the dead Clytemnestras powerful magic was such a fearful spectacle that women were caused
to miscarry on the spot. If we set aside the idea of a literal premiere in which the audience were
taken aback by the appearance, we can see that the anecdote reflects the novelty that their
appearance in the flesh represents within the trilogys own internal grammar. Easterling (2008)
pp. 223ff., Frontisi-Ducroux (2007) pp. 165-7.
152
On the self-referential qualities of the Eumenides Chorus, see Henrichs (1994-5) pp. 60-5,
Taplin and Wilson (1993) pp. 174-6.
137
role as dramatic Chorus marks their sympathetic ability to negotiate the boundary
between the seen and unseen scriptory space of tragic mimesis.
Mirroring her proleptic vision of the Furies, Cassandra incorporates another element
of the trilogys future development when she foretells the eventual requital of her murder
by Orestes (1279-5),
153
whose return to Argos will comprise the drama of the
Choephoroi. This vision of the dramatic future is repeated in Cassandras final prayer to
Helios and leads, somewhat obscurely, to her last words before entering into the house of
Atreus, and passing through the doors that she has already addressed as the gates of
Hades.
154
Lamenting the general condition of man, Cassandra gives her ultimate
assessment of her fate:
nv F8$-#14 )8=9%4-' #I-?J*V&-4 %C&
,51 -1' & )80p#1#& #n 3C 3?,-?J*K,
F*"4K' H98c,,:& ,)$99*' X"#,#& 984>A&.
54W -4V-' (5#+&:& %<""*& *n5-+8: )*"6. (1327-30)

Io, the affairs of mortals. When they are fortunate, a man is like a shadow. But if
they suffer misfortune, the wet sponge destroys the writing with a stroke. And I
pity far more the latter than the former.

The riddling language of her gnomic assertion recalls the image of Iphigenia, who
awaited her own violent fate in a kind of written silence ()80)*?,4 -v' (& 984>4K').
Now, trading on the polyvalence of the verb prep, which can denote conspicuity both in
terms of uniquely distinguished features or of clarity of perception, the peculiarity of
Iphigenias silence within her written text (itself synonymous with her death) is translated
into a more general meditation on the relationship between human ephemerality and the
permanence of writing. And, as conclusion to Cassandras emphatically performative
revelation of the nature of scriptory poetics, the mantis asserts that the presumed

153
*I %R& [-1%*+ 9' (5 ;#D& -#;&AP*%#&.
P#1 978 Y%D& [""*' 4] -1%=*8*', 1280
%O-8*5-$&*& >+-?%4, )*1&=-:8 )4-8$'
>?97' 3' @"A-O' -{,3# 9{' @)$P#&*'
5=-#1,1&, [-4' -=,3# ;8195c,:& >+"*1'
/%c%*-41 978 N85*' (5 ;#D& %094', 1290
[P#1& &1& H)-+4,%4 5#1%0&*? )4-8$'.
On the prophetic anticipation of Orestes matricide, Roberts (1985).
154
The marked terms of this claim 13*? )6"4' 3C -=,3' (9v )8*,#&&0): return to the
question of proper language with which Cassandras punning speech began.
138
durability of the physical text is, in fact, entirely dependent on human fortunes. The
powerful voice of the fortunate man can make his words shine out even in the dimmest
light, but for one who fares badly, no written fixity will save his words from being blotted
out in an instant. Cassandras prayer, like Iphigenias, will reach the ears of her avenger
even through the shadows of her death, and thus her fate is far less pitiable than that of
those who are silenced forever. The means for this preservation is the continued human
access to transcendent space of the trilogys script, from which Cassandra can glean a
clear vision of her future. Apollos curse, that Cassandras prophecies would only be
understood in retrospect, is thus transformed into the positive temporal model of the
script, which permits the poet to find his most powerful voice through the belated
temporality of future reperformance.
The complex spatio-temporal dynamics that we have traced though the multiple
voices contained within Pindars and Aeschylus poems offer us our first vision of how
our poets imagined their world of scriptory poetics. At its most essential, their interest
hinges on the question of voice and is revealed in their eager explorations of the dictional
modes and stances that may be invented and adapted to take advantage of a reconfigured
conceptual landscape. The sometimes confounding and dizzying impression left by their
experimentations in this new scriptory realm is a signal of the still inchoate nature of their
understanding. But their struggles should not be confused with a sense of loss or a
longing for a purer form of voice. Far from lamenting a lost golden age, Pindar and
Aeschylus exuberantly borrow the language and models of the past as they strive to work
out how the uncertain landscape of their scriptory world will reshape their voices in space
and time. The open-ended creativity of their unresolved relationship to the possibilities of
scriptory poetics offers a glimpse of the still magical power and turbulent beauty that lies
under the surface of their words.
139


PART TWO PLAYING PARTS
140
The examination of dictional mode in the first part of this study has served to establish a
foundation for the claim that Pindar and Aeschylus are scriptory poets, and that their
work often reflects the poets profound interest in this exciting and challenging quality of
their poetic output. Now we turn our attention to an examination of what this scriptory
world looked like: what figures and images did the poets use to represent the novel and
uncertain dynamics of scriptory reperformance, and how did they conceive of their own
authorial role within the scriptory future of their compositions?
We should from the outset keep in mind that scriptory poetics, as imagined by Pindar
and Aeschylus, is an exploration of the theoretical conditions under which their
compositions could become song. As such, it constitutes a moment in the intellectual,
rather than material, history of Greek poetry. It is undoubtedly the case that this figurative
reconfiguration coincided with significant developments in dramaturgy and the concrete
uses of writing for the purpose of preserving poetic compositions. But while these areas
merit study in their own right, they fall outside the scope of the present investigation. My
interest is focused specifically on the abstract possibilities of scriptory poetics which
Pindar and Aeschylus sought to understand and express through their work. In the
remaining chapters, I offer a preliminary sketch of what I believe to be the key
conceptual and figurative models used by Pindar and Aeschylus in order to elucidate their
vision of scriptory song.
The notion of scriptory poetics comprises a range of interlocking models that furnish
insight into the various components of the scriptory matrix. Because of the spatio-
temporal complexity of scriptory composition and reperformance, the individual elements
are most clearly understood when they are approached from different perspectives. Thus
the roles of the material script, the embodied reperformer, and the poet himself are each
explored through different metaphorical models: those, respectively, of the tool, the
snake, and the ghost. There is, naturally, much interaction between these different
figurative forms. And while they are best examined individually, they should be jointly
understood as meditations on the contours of scriptory song.
The dictional tropes of apostrophe and oratio recta that have guided our investigation
so far will still play an important role in flagging points of heightened interest in the
141
scriptory nature of our poets art. But the primary concern of the remainder of the study
will be to examine how these tropes function within the larger context of the poets
scriptory vision. That is, I will now seek to understand how the formal structures of
apostrophe and oratio recta are integrated into a larger project of scriptory exploration.
This picture is comprised of three key thematic areas, each of which provides the poets
with a figurative model through which they can explore an aspect of their poems
scriptory world.
The first thematic area I examine is the notion of the tool. The model of a physical
device serves as a metaphor for the concept of a material script, and allows the poets to
contemplate how their scriptory poems will be put to use by future reperformers. As
opposed to other models of written preservation that were available at the time most
prominently that of the monumental stone the functional transferability of the tool
highlights the spatio-temporal mobility of scriptory songs, thus differentiating them from
texts that are less dependent upon reperformance. At the same time, the intermediary
quality of the tool helps to align it with the scripts position at the critical juncture
between poet and reperformer.
In the next chapter, our focus shifts to the role of the reperformer himself, whose
bodily mimesis of the poets words is reflected in the image of the snake. The protean,
chthonic figure of the snake is characterized by its changing appearance and mutable
identity. Scriptory poetics adopts these properties as a model for understanding the
almost magical transfer of voice from poet to reperformer. The figure of the snake allows
us to look at the question of scriptory poetics from the perspective of reperformance.
How does a scriptory poem become song again? How does a belated, mediated repetition
attain the full status of the performative hic et nunc?
In our final examination, we turn to the poet himself. Through the figure of the ghost,
the strange, almost spectral presence of the poet is shown to be the indispensably
unifying principle of the scriptory structure. The idea of spatio-temporal mobility that
makes multiple reperformance possible not only permeates the notion of the physical
script and the embodied reperformer, but transforms the scriptory poet himself. The role
of the author becomes part of the figurative scriptory imagination, and the poet is
142
invested with the mystical and transcendent power of a ghost, a figure able to return from
the dead through the scriptory properties of his song.
The figurative nature of this picture arises from the language and poetic practice of
Pindar and Aeschylus. For although these poets are, I argue, deeply concerned with the
theoretical underpinnings of their work, they remain practitioners, not theoreticians, and
accordingly express themselves through the symbolic and metaphoric structures that
belong to their art even when exploring questions that we might, in light of Plato and
Aristotle, consider to fall within the province of philosophical discourse.
1

This poetic approach to theoretical problems is nicely mirrored in the thematic
prevalence of prophecy and dreams throughout the passages that we will be examining.
We have already seen how the spatio-temporal mobility of prophetic utterance is a key
analogue to the poets representation of their scriptory voice. Now, paired with the
equally elusive status of dream-vision,
2
the idea of an atemporal prophetic voice will
become a critical emblem of the poets scriptory imagination. Since prophecy and dreams
disrupt the notion of a hic et nunc, they guide our thoughts towards the spatio-temporal
dynamics at work in the poets compositions. But, equally important is the figurative
excess which these exceptional communicative modes introduce into the poetry of Pindar
and Aeschylus. Prophecies and dreams represent a model of the type of dense and
enigmatic thinking that characterizes our poets understanding of their scriptory poetics.
And, as objects of investigation and symbolic interpretation outside of the poetic sphere,
the presence of dreams and prophecies within their poems encourages us to look to
similarly symbolic or coded messages within the works themselves.
There is no better example of this figurative excess than Atossas dream in
Aeschylus Persai. Upon her first arrival on stage, the queen beguiles us with the claim
that she has had a dream more vivid than she has ever had before. She duly recounts
details of her vision: a chariot, driven by her son, and yoked before it two women, one
dressed in Persian garb, the other in Greek; the latter breaks free of the harness and the
chariot is overturned. Given the context of the play, the ominous import of the dream is
clear: Xerxes will not be successful in his expedition against the Greeks. But Atossa is

1
See especially the discussion of Ford (2002) pp. 230-49.
2
On the connections between dreams and prophecy, see Johnston (2008) pp. 9-10, 90-7, 134-7.
143
not finished with her tale. When she awoke, the queen continues, and went to offer
libations she was visited by a portent: two birds; an eagle chased and killed by a hawk.
The portent reperforms the dream, and in so doing complicates the picture. This added
layer of symbolism asks that we reflect on how the same vision may take on multiple
forms or be seen from different perspectives. We, alongside Atossa, the astonished
spectator to these fearful sights, are invited into a world where strikingly different figures
can be joined together by an unseen, and perhaps unknowable, bond. These dreams and
portents open the poets compositions to realms that transcend mere literal significance.
At the same time, they offer a brief but insistent glimpse of how the poets imagined the
transformational power of scriptedness to reconfigure their own poetic world. These
special moments of spatio-temporal disruption stand at the furthest limits of scriptory
potential, but they present a powerful reminder of the full range of what the poets songs
can do.
144
CHAPTER 3 TOOLS: OLYMPIAN 13, SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

We begin our examination of the various figurations of poetic scriptedness we find
throughout the works of Pindar and Aeschylus with the notion of the tool. The concept of
a tool an implement which is designed to be manipulated in order to achieve a goal that
would otherwise be difficult or impossible to attain is fundamentally a simple one.
However, the idea of a poetic tool inevitably raises the far thornier question of the nature
of poetry itself. In the twenty-first century, our thoughts naturally turn to the implements
of written technology: pen and ink, typewriter and printing press for the modern world;
stylus and papyrus, chisel and plinth in ancient times. Implicit in such images is an ideal
of poetic objecthood that has been at the center of the western tradition for many
centuries. But, as I hope to demonstrate, Pindar and Aeschylus did not conceive of their
compositions as poetic monuments but as scriptory songs. Their poems were created as
reperformative events, inseparable from the fully embodied spectacle that would bring
them to life in countless future iterations. Hence, while the literal tools of writing do
occasionally crop up in the poetry of Pindar and Aeschylus, they are not what the poets
thought about when they imagined a poetic tool. Since their idea of a poem was
inherently performative, the tool that our poets were concerned to understand did not help
to produce a written object, it was itself a written aid: a script for reperformance.
The tool represents the script in its physical form, a fixed object that conveys the
encoded writing of the poets text. Yet, the script is not a substitute for or equivalent of a
poem. It is an intermediary that can preserve and transmit the inherently performative
nature of the scriptory poem, a tool to turn the poets words into a living event in a future
time and space. As the term implies, the tool can only function as an implement to be
wielded, either by the author who encodes it or by the reperformer who brings its silent
message back to life. As such, the tool inhabits an uncertain position within the spatio-
temporal matrix of scriptory poetics. Its material form is the essential repository able to
hold fast the poets ephemeral voice. Yet its role is not static, since it must also act as a
conduit to carry the poets composition to its many reperformers across time and space.
The spatio-temporal mobility afforded by the tool forms the essence of scriptory poetics,
145
but such mobility depends on a material aid which in itself has none of the dynamic
qualities which it confers.
Soon after Pindar and Aeschylus sketched these first formulations, western poetics
abandoned the model of the scriptory tool, except in circumscribed dramatic contexts.
But we should be careful not to confuse the clarity of our hindsight with the objectives of
the poets themselves. For Pindar and Aeschylus the script was not a consolation prize or a
step on the way to a more satisfyingly robust idea of written materiality. Rather they
found in the idea of the tool a richer means of exploring the stubbornly material aspects
of scriptory poetics within an emphatically performative sphere. Materiality was not an
accomplishment towards which either poet labored, their shared goal was reperformance
and the physical script was but a tool to enable it. Thinking of the script in this way
allowed our poets to explain the hybrid nature of works which were emphatically
performative and yet reliant on an inanimate materiality. The model of the tool helped
them imagine a scriptory world in which the conditions for poetic performance were
unfolding in exciting and unfamiliar ways.
The problem, then, for our poets was to find objects that would allow them to
concretize the idea of a scriptory tool for reperformance. Unsurprisingly, they found
figurations of this still inchoate notion of the script in a wide array of instruments and
appurtenances. Nonetheless, the most fertile areas tended to be those with some
connection to the poets art. On occasion this meant looking to the tools closest to hand,
namely the musical instruments that formed an integral part of Greek poetic
performance.
1
As a tool, the script resembles traditional musical instruments in a number
of key respects. It was an object that required skill and ingenuity both to produce and to
operate. It was or was fast becoming an essential facet of the poets creative process
as he shaped his compositions to take advantage of the possibilities that it could offer.
And although like a musical instrument the script underpinned and made poetic
performance possible, it was not an actor or agent within the poem except when
deliberately gestured to in a kind of self-referential mimesis.

1
For introduction and general discussion, see Gentili and Pretagostini (1988), West, M. L.
(1994), Anderson (1994).
146
Some of the influence of the notion of the script can be seen in the novel ways that
Pindar and Aeschylus imagine the role of musical instruments within their poems. Pindar
does not renounce the traditional melic trope of calling for instruments to be taken up for
song.
2
But, at the same time, he occasionally imbues his instruments with a problematic
sense of agency that challenges established notions of how a tool might function in a
performative context. We find a notable example at the opening of his first Pythian, when
Pindar apostrophizes the golden lyre, and praises its ability to subdue those who perform
and listen to its sounds and even the gods themselves.
3
The instrument is represented as a
tool to be wielded by musical performers, but also as a discrete entity with a certain
power and agency of its own. The potential for (re)performance rests not only with the
musicians who take up the tool, but with the tool itself. The instrument, I suggest, is
being imbued with the qualities of the scriptory tool. For it is this new notion of a poetic
instrumentation that generates the desire to instill performative potential into the
material object.
A similar perspective can be found in the fragments of Aeschylus Edones, a play
which detailed the problematic arrival of Dionysus and his disciple, Orpheus the
mousomantis,
4
at the court of Lycurgus. The play, now mostly lost, is known to have
been an important influence on Euripides own extremely meta-theatrical dionsysiac
tragedy, the Bacchai, and is likely to have contained much metapoetic and metatheatrical
meditation by Aeschylus himself.
5
Our longest fragment, an anapaestic passage most
probably voiced by the Chorus, describes the raucous new instruments that have been
introduced alongside the worship of the new god, Dionysus. At first the poet places the
instruments in the hands of performers: ~ %C& (& J#8,W& F$%F?54' QJ:& -$8&*?
5=%4-*&, 345-?"$3#15-*& )+%)"O,1 %0"*' [] ~ 3C J4"5*30-*1' 5*-6"41' /-*F#K.
One has in his hands the bombukes, wrought upon the turning-lathe, and fills it with a
fingered song [] Another sounds the kotylae, bound in bronze. (fr. 57.2-6 Radt). But as

2
Herington (1985), Morrison (2007).
3
Similar, though less extreme, is N.4.44ff. (P6>41&#, 9"?5#K4, 54W -$3' 4I-+54, >$8%19P, /
?3+t ,d& _8%*&+t %0"*' )#>1"O%0&*&/ mn&c&t -# 54W !6)8L, Q&;4 S#V58*' @)=8J#1 /
~ S#"4%:&1=34'.
4
fr. 60 Radt: -+' )*-' (,;. ~ %*?,$%4&-1', [""*' @F84-*V' k& ,;0&#1. The reasons for
assuming that Orpheus is the character described are presented by West (1990) p. 29.
5
West (1990) pp. 30-1, Xanthakis-Karamanos (1996).
147
the fearful sonic picture evolves, the instruments themselves take on an unseen agency,
becoming mimics capable of producing their own organic sounds: -4?8$>;*99*1 3'
H)*%?5D&-41 )*;C& (P @>4&*V' >*F#8*W %K%*1 -?[%])=&*? 3' #n5v& Z,;'
H)*94+*? F8*&-{' >08#-41 F48?-48FA'. The fearsome, bull-voiced mimics bellow
from an unseen place and from the tympanos the terrible likeness of thunder is borne as
if from underground (fr. 57.8-11 Radt). As with Pindars lyre, the dionysiac instruments
have become agents in their own right, producing fearful sounds as if they were animate
creatures themselves.
The attribution of such outsized power to the instrumental tool reflects the poets
burgeoning excitement at their transforming understanding of this centrally important
aspect of poetic performance. Yet, the figurative use of musical instruments to discuss
another poetic tool is prone to much confusion and potential blurring between the highly
proximate tenor and vehicle of the image. When deployed in just the right manner, the
metaphoric representation of the musical instrument can as in the case of Pindars first
Pythian elegantly convey how the performative potential of the traditional tools of song
could be adapted and transformed by the new tools of scriptory poetics. More often,
however, our poets turn to other areas of their generic and performative spheres which
were less likely to confuse or obscure the properties of scriptedness they sought to
explore. In Pindars epinician odes, the richest vein is found in the appurtenances
employed by the athletic victors whose accomplishments the poet is commemorating.
6

The javelins, discus, and chariots of the agn and the wreaths of the victory celebration
are all appropriated by the poet to explore the complex materiality of his poetic
enterprise. For Aeschylus, the world of the theater, comprised of the props, costume and
mask, provided the playwright with his principal resource for thinking with and about
tools.
7
In addition, both poets regularly draw upon the methods of conveyance
especially wagons and ships that carry their scripts throughout the Greek
Mediterranean. It is in this spirit that Pindar presents his famous programmatic statement
at the opening of Nemean Five (1-5):

6
Steiner (1986) pp. 111-21.
7
On clothing and cloth, see Goheen (1955), Fowler (1967), Avery (1964), Macleod (1975),
Thalmann (1980), Sider (1978). On props, Taplin (1977) p. 38, Chaston (2010).
148
mI5 @&3814&-*)*1$' #n%', Z,-' ("1&6,*&-4 (89=y#,;41 @9="%4-'
()' 4I-<' F4;%+3*'
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,-#KJ' @)' n9+&4' 314990""*1,', N-1
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I am no sculptor who makes idle statues to be fixed upon a single pedestal. But on
every merchant vessel, o sweet song, go out from Aegina announcing that
Pytheas, the mighty son of Lampon won the crown of the pankration in Nemea

The contrast between the material fixity of the sculptors work and the dynamic mobility
of Pindars song, emphasized by the shift to the second person address in line two, has to
various ends been noted by a great number of scholars.
8
But this binary comparison elides
the role of the vessel ([54-*') in conveying the poem across the sea. Whereas sculpture
rests upon a pedestal (F4;%+'), song is entrusted to a ship. The latter is no less possessed
of material fixity than the former, but the craft is capable of the kind of movement that is
denied to the statue-base. The mobility of the ship enables it to function as an
intermediary, connecting unbridgeable points through a kinetic motion that is not simply
compatible with, but is inherent to its physical integrity. The image, at once a literal and
metaphoric description of the reperformative future that Pindar imagines for his poem,
fuses the necessarily material nature of the scriptory tool with the very vessel that will
carry it as cargo.
9

Yet for all of the ships material solidity, at the center of the image is still the
apostrophized aoida. The insistent duality of passage helps to illuminate the poetic
process that is imagined through the idea of the tool. While a tool must be physically
robust, it is not self-sufficient in its materiality. Monuments are complete entities in and
of themselves. By contrast, the tool must be put to use. This attribute is evident in the
Greek terms techn and mchan, which denote not just the tool as physical object, but
equally the abstract ability to harness and exploit its potential. The tools physical
integrity and permanence becomes productive only in light of its use. Through its

8
A bibliography is offered by Pfeijffer (1999c) ad loc. Amongst the work that has appeared since
the publication of Pfeijffers commentary are Steiner (2001) pp. 251, 263-4, Ford (2002) pp. 113-
27, Loscalzo (2003) pp. 124-54, O'Sullivan (2003), Thomas (2007), Pavlou (2010).
9
See Hubbard (2004) pp. 89-90.
149
intrinsic fusion of the fixed and the transitory the tool presents a crucial metaphor for the
contradictory nature of the poetic script, and re-contextualizes a physical object as at once
solid and fluid. In Pindars nautical image, this hybrid status is represented through the
reciprocal relationship of ship and song. The solid vessel exists in order to carry a cargo
that cannot travel without aid because of its immaterial nature. Yet the songs continued
immateriality is only possible because of the material structure on which it relies for its
transport.
The dynamic and constructive materiality of the scriptory tool is exemplified by the
metaphoric image of the cork, a device used by fishermen to suspend their nets in the sea.
Both Pindar and Aeschylus portray the cork in a similar fashion, floating above the
waters while the rest of the fishing apparatus lies hidden in the depths of the sea. For both
poets, the cork is a symbol of the material tools perseverance when faced with the
obscurity of submersion. Below the waterline, one is lost to the world of the living, but
the cork is notable for its ability to hold itself just above the boundary of the abyss. This
common understanding of the figurative power of the cork is elaborated in slightly
different ways by the two poets, and the diverging details offer some especially rich
insight into their complex and at times contradictory understanding of the qualified
materiality their scriptory poetry has started to embrace.
The spatio-temporal properties of the cork are the primary concern of the Aeschylean
passage, which comes at the close of the central kommos in the Choephoroi. The
authenticity of the lines has been questioned by modern editors, but I believe that their
propriety not only to the scene, but to the trilogy as a whole makes a strong case for their
inclusion.
10
Especially apposite in the context of the Oresteia is the corks partnership

10
The lines are printed (and attributed to Electra) by both Page and Garvie. Murray, by contrast,
places them in brackets (and attributes the entire speech to Orestes). The need for intervention in
the text is assumed from the lack of symmetry in the 13 lines of exchange between Orestes and
Electra (497-509). This seeming imbalance in the speeches can be resolved in a number of ways
that critics have generally ignored, either by positing missing (rather than interpolated) lines, or
as I indeed advocate by attributing the entire speech to Orestes alone. This latter solution is
supported by the admittedly limited manuscript evidence since there is a cessation of
paragraphus markings in M. Further, there is little logical reason to object to Orestes taking up
the exclusive speaking role at either line 497 or 502. It is universally accepted that at this point in
the play the Electra character is elided from the action. It is clear that Electra does not speak after
line 507 and that Orestes takes over full responsibility for the dialogue with the Chorus; why
should this shift not take place a few lines earlier? On the (quite tenuous and almost entirely
150
with the world below the surface, which activates the trilogys central thematic concern
with another tool: the net. But whereas the trilogys representation of the net is usually as
an emblem of deception and slaughter,
11
here the cork permits a kind of continuity after
death (503-7):
m8. 54W %R 'P4"#+pb' ,)08%4 s#"*)13D& -$3#,
*g-: 978 *I -0;&O54' *I30 )#8 ;4&c&.
[H".] )4K3#' 978 @&38W 5"O3$&#' ,:-A81*1 505
;4&$&-1 >#""*W 3' ' [9*?,1 3+5-?*&,
-E& (5 F?;*V 5":,-{84 ,y*&-#' "+&*?.

Do not erase this seed of the Pelopidai, for in this way the dead one has not died.
For children are the speaking preservers of a man who has died, like corks that
hold a net, saving the linen thread from the abyss.

Like corks suspending the nets under the waters, children preserve the fame of the dead
and thus keep part of them alive. The transcendent partnership between net and cork is
mapped onto the value of generational continuity but also, in the context of Orestes and
Electras prayers to their dead father, onto the idea of communicating with the dead. But
the cork provides a very circumscribed version of immortality which relies on the
material mediation between above and below, between the world of the living and that of
the dead. The metaphor of erasure which introduces the simile draws a direct parallel
between the continued visibility of the cork and the verbal perpetuation that is made
possible through writing.
12
The physical connection enabled by the cork is like that of the
literal script, which stands as a fixed intermediary between the author and those who seek
to make his words live on. The juxtaposition of the two images places focus on the
instrumental character of writing to maintain what is no longer present, delivering a part
of what is below back to the surface.
As much as the cork simile illuminates the idea of a written text, it also draws
attention to a degree of complexity which inheres in the performative nature of the
scriptory tool. In the clear structure of similitude, it is evident that the paides themselves

subjective) additional arguments against the inclusion of 505-7, see Garvie (1986) and Sier
(1988) ad loc.
11
Fowler (1967) p. 26.
12
On the metaphor, see Garvie (1986) ad loc. On the common interaction between similes and
more complex or opaque metaphoric formulations, see Silk (1974) pp. 88-9.
151
are assimilated into the material status of the cork. The material instrument is not inert,
but is invested with the living voice (5"O3$&#') of the human agents who employ it. The
same conflation is made even more emphatically in Pindars formulation in the final triad
of Pythian 2 (76-80):
[%4J*& 545E& @%>*-08*1' 314F*"1<& H)*>=-1#',
/894K' @-#&C' @":)05:& e5#"*1.
5083#1 3C -+ %="4 -*V-* 5#834"0*& -#"0;#1;
z-# 978 (&&="1*& )$&*& (J*+,4' F4;6&
,5#?<' j-084', @F=)-1,-*' #i%1 >#""E' ' H)C8 f85*' z"%4'.

Those who trade in slanders are an intractable evil for all involved, like foxes
they are unbending in their passions. What benefit does this cunning produce?
For while the rest of the tackle is held laboring in the depths of the sea, I am
unsinkable, like a cork, above the boundary of the brine.

As in the Aeschylean passage, the corks and leaden weights function in a reciprocal
relationship as two facets of the same operation.
13
The cork remains in view above the
water although the rest of the poetic mechanism is weighted down in obscurity. As a
material object, it is fixed only in relation to its position at the boundary of the sea (f85*'
z"%4'), at the point of contact between seen and unseen, living and dead, present and
past. Through its connection to what is below the surface, the cork retains access to the
unseen without itself being subject to the same fate. All poets must eventually sink
beneath the waves, but those who know how to send their songs traveling over the sea, as
Pindar claims to do just before the passage quoted,
14
possess a tool that also allows them
to remain abaptistos.
15
The poet openly assimilates himself to his material tool, but as
we saw above in our discussion of the sailing poem of Nemean 5 it is the paradox of the
scriptory tool that this very inert materiality is what enables the poets voice to retain its
living spirit and float above the depths.


13
Most (1985) p. 109. On ,5#?<' j-084' as the lead weights that hold down the nets, rather than
the nets themselves, see Most (1987) pp. 569-71. See also, Gentili and Bernardini (1995) ad loc.
14
-$3# %C& 54-7 *+&1,,4& (%)*"=& / %0"*' H)C8 )*"1<' _"E' )0%)#-41 67-8.
15
The connection between these two maritime images is noted by Most (1985) p. 109 n. 73.
152
1. ATHENAS GIFT
In Pindars thirteenth Olympian, the mediating power of the tool as a model for the
unique materiality of scriptory poetics is explored through the figure of the bridle. Since
its primary function is to join two disparate agents the rider and his horse the bridle
perfectly instantiates the ability of the material script to yoke author and reperformer in a
shared endeavor. For Pindar, it is not the literal use to which the bridle may be put but the
conditions of its first discovery that hold out the richest avenue for exploration. The tale
remains focused on the bridles mediating character but explores how this quality was
present in the object at the point of first creation. This shift allows Pindar to graft the
tools inherently intermediary status onto the more subtle relationship between its creator
and subsequent users.
16
The delineation of roles mirrors the scriptory dynamic in which
the poet and reperformer are joined through the medium of the script, and I hope to show
that the myth is structured so as to present a more pointed meditation on the nature of the
script as tool. Pindars narrative allows us to see both the encoding of the tool and its
receipt by the reperformer. The intermediary position of the bridle serves as a nexus
between these two spheres, and the divergent relationship each actor has to the material
medium.
The main stage for these explorations will be the odes central account of how Athena
entrusted the bridle to Bellerophon to harness the winged Pegasus. But before Pindar
begins his mythical tale, he offers an explanation of sorts for his interest in the bridle. At
the close of the first triad the poet turns his praise to the victors homeland, lauding
Corinth for its threefold claim to technical invention (16-22):
)*""7 3' (& 5483+41' @&38D& QF4"*&
-841 )*"?=&;#%*1 @8J4K4 ,*>+,%4;'. z)4& 3' #H8$&-*' Q89*&.
-4W B1:&6,*? )$;#& (P0>4&#&
,d& F*O"=-t J=81-#' 31;?8=%FL;
-+' 978 ))#+*1' (& Q&-#,,1& %0-84, 20
a ;#D& &4*K,1& *n:&D& F4,1"04 3+3?%*&
()0;O5';

Many ancient contrivances did the many-blossomed Hours place in the hearts of
men [there]. And all of the work belongs to the discoverer. Whence did they

16
What [] emerges from the myth in Olympian 13 is the suggestion that the function of the
bridle is not so much an instrument of dominance as of revelation. Dickson (1986) p. 131.
153
reveal the Graces with the ox-winning dithyramb of Dionysus? And who
established the measures for equine implements, or the double king of birds on the
temples of the gods?

The three areas of innovation catalogued in the passage range over a broad sphere of
human endeavor: poetry, war-craft, sacred architecture. But it is possible, in a more
metaphorical spirit, to see all three inventions as bearing upon the realm of poetic
production, each expressing a different aspect of the multiform nature of song in the age
of the script. The description of the dithyramb, in its first rendition by the Graces
themselves, represents poetry in its most emphatically performative and ephemeral
character.
17
By contrast, the architectural innovation, fixed in stone or bronze, reflects the
opposite pole, the reified monument of a written text. And in the middle we have the
metron, the bridle. The mediating tool is endowed with both tangible and kinetic
properties.
18
It is fixed (()0;O5#) like the finials upon the temple,
19
but imbued with the
animate mobility of the beasts on which it will be used ())#+*1' (& Q&-#,,1&).
Such a poetically charged reading is suggested by the metapoetic resonances found
throughout the passage,
20
most notably the framing language which speaks of the
inventions as erga and sophismata. Pindar introduces his brief meditation with a crisply
enigmatic claim: z)4& 3' #H8$&-*' Q89*&. The gnomic assertion, following on the
claim that the Horai had granted Corinth many sophismata, helps to draw out the poets
understanding of the poetic connection between the three, seemingly disparate inventions
he goes on to list. The term sophisma is generally limited to the realm of action a
stratagem or clever method that cannot properly refer to a material object.
21
In the
passage under discussion, however, it is clear that this restricted definition is expanded

17
Mullen (1982) pp. 209-20.
18
Detienne (1971), Dickson (1986).
19
On the connection between such winged architecture and song, see Power (2011).
20
Metra is an accepted poetic designation by the end of the fifth century, meaning either stichic
meter or, especially in the plural, verses. Reference to the contemporary performative sphere is
found in the adjective bolats, which is thought to denote the prize awarded in dithyrambic
competition. In addition, the predominant focus on the Horai and the Graces, the only identified
agents before the mention of the Muse that signals the end of the catalogue (22), gives the
passage as a whole an strongly metapoetic tone.
21
The term perhaps also resonated with the idea of poetic performance, both through its
connection to the verb ,*>+y*%41, with its well established poetic meaning, and in its own right,
as attested by its use in Ar.Ra.17, 872, 1104.
154
somewhat, to include not only the contrivance of dithyrambic performance, but also the
physical objects bridle and gable that comprise the remainder of the catalogue. The
implicit widening of meaning is glossed by the term ergon, which encompasses both
senses of the English noun work: an action or its material result. The broader
conceptual range of the latter term is imposed on the former, for which it functions here
as a kind of definitional synonym. But Pindars potentially confusing choice of the term
sophisma to describe the Corinthian innovations is not accidental, for it points to the
mental properties required by discovery of any kind. This stress on the need for an active
agent in the process of innovation is picked up in the gnomic parentheses not by the term
ergon, but by the far more ambiguous participle heurontos. The genitive turns the
discovery into a possession,
22
but of what kind and, more importantly, of whom remains
unclear. The verb heurisk, which Pindar regularly applies to his own task of poetic
composition, points to the inventor the Horai or the Graces whose agency is duly noted
but also to a retriever, the one who happens to find something and makes it his own.
23

In the case of the Corinthian discoveries, the unspecified tis of the latter two innovations
may well be, like the goddesses mentioned earlier, the inventor of the devices, but he may
also be a finder, someone who, like Bellerophon, takes up an unfamiliar gift and puts it to
work. The duality of the term is evident in Pindars self-reflexive use of the verb, which
often finds the inventive poet relying upon the Muses for his inspiration.
24
The poetic
discovery, like that of the Corinthians, is a shared endeavor possessed in its many forms
by more that one heurn.
When, after a lengthy interlude, the poem takes up the mythical account of
Bellerophons exploits, the identity of the heurn is the central concern of the narration.
In Pindars portrayal, the critical role of Athena in supplying Bellerophon with the bridle
complicates the picture of the heros discovery.
25
The goddesss indispensable
intervention is highlighted in the poets gnomic reflections on the tale: -#"#K 3C ;#D&
36&4%1' 54W -7& )48' N85*& 54W )487 (")+34 5*6>4& 5-+,1&. (83). But, more

22
Even if we take the genitive as denoting source, the idea is still primarily an expression of
ownership.
23
Dickson (1986) p. 125 esp. n. 16.
24
O.3.4; O.9.80; Cf. P.12.22.
25
Hubbard (1986) pp. 28-33.
155
effectively, the poet conveys Athenas imparting of the bridle with a vividness hardly
afforded to another actor in the tale. The primary means through which the goddesss
actions are rendered so lucid lies in the use of oratio recta, which brings Athena firmly
into the performative hic et nunc. Her words, themselves a bold command, begin the
mythical account by breaking through the impasse of Bellerophons impotent desires (63-
9):
k' -<' />1c3#*' ?$& )*-# *89$&*' )$""' @%>W 58*?&*K'
s=94,*& y#VP41 )*;0:& Q)4;#&,
)8+& 90 * J8?,=%)?54 5*684 J4"1&$& 65
s4""7' ^&#95', (P /&#+8*? 3' 4I-+54
& g)48, >c&4,# 3' g3#1' n*"+34 F4,1"#V;
[9# >+"-8*& -$3' o))#1*& 305#?,
54W B4%4+L &1& ;6:& -4V8*& @89=#&-4 )4-8W 3#KP*&.

[Bellerophon,] who once suffered from a great desire to yoke the son of the snaky
Gorgon beside the spring, until the maiden Pallas brought him a golden-filleted
bridle coming as a true vision from a dream, and spoke: Are you sleeping, Aiolid
king? Come, take this equine charm and, sacrificing a shining bull, share it with
your father, the Breaker.

Athenas epiphany is a moment of clarity and truth, a hupar ex oneirou. Her words are
lucid and direct; an analogue to the certain power of the gift which she bestows. The
speech is characterized by unambiguous indexical markers. Athena ties herself to her
addressee, Bellerophon, through the use of the forceful second person interrogative and
vocative combination at the opening of her speech (#g3#1'F4,1"#V;) and through the
subsequent density of imperatives ([9#, 305#?, 3#KP*&). In addition, Athena confers the
same vivid presence to the bridle she brings with her, referring to the object with a deictic
signal (>+"-8*& -$3' o))#1*&). The verbal gesture brings the object into the dynamic
reality created by Athenas oratio recta and binds the material gift to the speech itself.
The bridle is thus imbued with the power of her words, and in her absence will remain
encoded as a material representative of what was said.
26
When the moment of clarity, in
which the goddesss presence ensured the truth of her communication, has passed, her
divine words leave their mark on the bridle. This tool is left as a script for Bellerophon, a

26
There is no indication, as in many Pindaric epiphanies, as to whether Athena has appeared in
bodily form to Bellerophon or simply through her voice. On purely verbal epiphany see Vernant
(1974), Dickson (1990), also Pucci (1998) chap. 5 and Pucci (1994).
156
material intermediary between the single moment of Athenas appearance and the heros
implementation of her commands.
The importance of the material reduplication of the bridle is evident in the close
modeling of Athenas speech on Homeric dream apparitions. Athenas words replicate
(and thus reperform) the communications of epic dream scenes, both true and false.
27
Her
speech, like those that we explored in the previous chapters, is a kind of performative
palimpsest, re-deploying a Homeric speech in the voice of a different speaker. But unlike
the hexameter paradigm, Pindar pairs the goddesss words with an inanimate marker, the
bridle. The function of this so-called apport is to confirm the validity of the divine
epiphany, to verify the true presence of the god once the dreamer has awoken.
28
Such
physical markers are entirely absent from Homeric dream-visions and Pindars decisive
use of the device is a clear sign of his interest in the concept of a material intermediary to
fix and convey speech beyond the moment of its articulation.
29

Yet the bridle is not merely a sign of the epiphany. Its function, like that of a script,
requires implementation. Unused, the bridle is meaningless. In order to mediate the
verbal exchange, it must be put into service. Bellerophon will only complete the
communicative sequence begun by Athenas unrequited speech when he finally places
the bridle on the winged horse, performing the instructions encoded in the object. But to
do so, Bellerophon must be able to perceive the encoded message of the apport.
As the heurn of an exotic new tool, Bellerophon does not immediately grasp the
mechanics of the bridle as mediating script. The clarity with which Athenas speech is
revealed to the audience is not shared by the hero, who merely seems to hear her through
the uncertain perception of the dream. Where the speech is initially presented in a stark
framing introduction as a true event (>c&4,# 3'), the closing frame reflects
Bellerophons far less certain viewpoint: 5?=&4191' (& 8>&t / 5&c,,*&-+ *
)48;0&*' -$,4 #n)#K& / Q3*P#& These things the virgin of the dark-aegis seemed to say
to him slumbering in the night. (70-2) Focalization has shifted over the course of

27
Most famously, the false dream of Il. 2.22ff. addresses Agamemnon in the same manner:
#g3#1' U-80*' ?C 34w>8*&*' ))*3=%*1*;. Similar language is found in Patroclus appariton
to Achilles at Il. 23.68ff. and Athenas to Penelope at Od. 4.803ff.
28
Harris (2009) p. 43.
29
In fact, Pindars O.13 is the first extant instance in Greek literature of an apport left to confirm
a dream epiphany. Harris (2009) p. 43.
157
Athenas address and the certain, declarative language with which the speech was
introduced is correspondingly exchanged for the descriptive realm of semblances;
30

Athena does not speak, as the initial framing language states, but only seems to speak
to Bellerophon.
31

Unsure of what the tool might mean, Bellerophon does not immediately set about his
hitherto delayed undertaking, rushing off to master the long-desired stallion. Instead, the
hero gathers the bridle from his side and goes in search of a human mantis; he needs the
apparition explained and confirmed.
32
Bellerophon can no more understand the fixed
status of the apport than the fleeting moment of Athenas apparition. The full extent of
his incomprehension is made clear when, preempting the goddesss instructions through
his conversation with the seer, Bellerophon reveals (3#KP0&) the bridle to the mantis, not
to Poseidon as Athena had instructed ()4-8W 3#KP*&).
33

Athenas powers of divine communication especially her ability to invest objects
with the force of her words are unavailable to the hero and thus he must work to
gradually uncover the relationship between the object and the goddesss speech.
Bellerophons initial bafflement at the bridle fits into a larger pattern that is reflected in
the many mythic accounts of the heros life. Throughout archaic literature, the inability to
comprehend written communication is a hallmark of Bellerophons character. While this
trait is best represented by the paradigmatic narrative of Bellerophons sufferings as a
result of his ignorance of Proteus letter (a popular theme of late fifth-century tragedy),
variants of this problematic illiteracy can be traced back to Homeric epic.
34
In his re-

30
Mackie (2003) p. 59.
31
The use of the verb 3*50: is a regular construction for dream description in the fifth century,
signaling the special status of the dreamers perception. Kessels (1978) pp. 198-200. Cf. Aesch.
Ag. 16-17 N-4& 3 @#+3#1& a %1&68#,;41 !&#G, / g)&*? -$3 @&-+%*")*& (&-0%&:& [5*'.
32
Suarez de la Torre (1988) p. 78: En realidad, ms que interpretar, Poliido aconseja acerca del
ensuerio y prescribe el procedimiento a seguir; es decir, ratifica la validez y el origen divino de
aqul. So also Jouan (1995) p. 280, Nnlist (2007) pp. 237-8.
33
As Dodds notes, this type of secondary elaboration was not uncommon with ambiguous
dreams received through incubation, but it is hard to see that Bellerophons experience would
need such clarification. Dodds (1951) pp. 111-4, Harris (2009) Ch. 1.1-3.
34
Deborah Steiner notes the Homeric Bellerophons general inability to interpret symbolic
language, and writing in particular, Steiner (1994) chap. 1, passim. On the possible interpretations
of the Homeric Bellerophon episode by fifth-century tragedians, see Easterling (1985) p. 5. On
Bellerophons representation in Euripides, see Jouan (1966) p. 284 n. 2.
158
telling of Bellerophons invention of the bridle,
35
Pindar draws on this traditional attribute
to explore the heros relationship to the tool insofar as it reflects the conceptual
framework of the material script. But unlike those failed encounters with writing from
which Pindar draws the theme, the narrative of Olympian 13 presents a Bellerophon who
learns to make use of the scriptory tool to accomplish his greatest feat.
Like the script in its fully reified form, the bridle is incapable of conveying its
encoded message without a human reperformer to give voice to its mute words. For
Bellerophon, the mantis, Polydios, will serve as a teacher and model of this operation by
offering a reperformance of his own for the hero to observe. Polydios, qua seer, serves as
an intermediary between the divine and mortal worlds.
36
This special status, analogous to
that of the bridle, establishes the seer as a living correlate to the inanimate apport. In his
exchange with Polydios, Bellerophon offers his own unwitting reperformance of all that
has occurred ()<,4& -#"#?-7&), but it is the seer who echoes the words of the goddess,
instructing the hero albeit in oratio obliqua to fulfill Athenas commands (79-82). As
noted above, the gnome which follows Polydios speech elides not only his, but
Bellerophons role in the endeavor. Yet for Bellerophon, Polydios interpretative
reperformance is indispensible. Athena may have imbued the apport with the meaning of
her words, but for her mortal interlocutor and recipient of the gift the shared subjectivity
of bridle and goddess remains opaque. To see the bridle as script, Bellerophon must
witness Polydios reperformance to confirm that the goddess is behind it that it has her
stamp.
The evolution of Bellerophons conception can be traced throughout the passage in
the language used to describe the bridle. The narrator introduces the object with the
neutral definition of chrusampux chalinos (65, golden-filleted bridle), denoting both the
function and the materiality of Athenas gift. But in the words of the goddess herself, the
bridle becomes a philtron hippeion (69, an equine charm). The shift in conception is bold.
The periphrasis is a signal of the objects novel status, but it also reflects Athenas
understanding of the bridles abiding connection to the animal on which it will be used

35
Pindars significant reworking of established variants of the myth is discussed by Hubbard
(1986) pp. 29-33.
36
Hubbard (1986) p. 33, Jouan (1995) p. 281.
159
and, more importantly, its almost magical, transformative power.
37
Athenas definition
expresses her unwavering control over and understanding of the object that she bestows
upon Bellerophon. She can foresee its future use even when he cannot. When
Bellerophon awakes, the terminology shifts to register his evolving perception of the
bridle. First he views it as a teras (73, a portent), as though uncertain what kind of a thing
the bridle is. Although the term links the apport to Athenas apparition, the abstract
concept of teras corresponds to Bellerophons ignorance of the nature of their
connection. He recognizes the wondrous quality of the bridle, but its meaning remains
obscure. The materiality of the bridle begins to emerge as he recounts the event to
Polydios, when he calls it damasiphrn chrusos (78, mind-conquering gold). Finally,
when he sets out to apply the bridle to the winged horse, Bellerophon is able to share
Athenas understanding of the object which once again takes shape as a charm or spell, a
pharmakon pra (85, a gentle drug). Bellerophon can comprehend the apport as its
encoder intended. Moreover, he recognizes his own role as reperformer, and takes up the
object as his scripted tool. And it is with these twinned insights he is able to put the bridle
to use and with it perform its purpose.
The description of the bridle as a magic charm or drug aligns it with Pindars own
perception of poetry, which is variously called pharmakon (N.4.1), philtron (P.3.64)
epaoidai (P.3.51).
38
Like the golden phorminx of Pythian 1 discussed at the beginning of
the chapter, the activated poetic tool exerts its power in all directions, enchanting all who
come into contact with it. Bellerophons bridle, now fully realized as a script, can
transcend its material nature and once again communicate the mandate of the goddess
through the hands of its reperformer. The qualities the script takes on when properly
understood by its maker and its reperformers activate the potential that lies dormant in the
unused tool.
As Bellerophon, joined through the bridle with Athena and the divine Pegasus sets off
on his many adventures across the Greek world, Pindar takes up his own poetic tool,
launching his missiles of song like an instrument into the air with the aid of the Muses

37
Dickson (1986) pp. 129-30.
38
Steiner (1986) pp. 56-7.
160
(94ff.).
39
Like the bridle, each time the instruments are taken up they regain the
spontaneous vitality of their first encoding; an oral subterfuge in material form. But just
as Bellerophons discovery was positioned within a long line of mythical endeavors
taking place in the city favored by the Horai, Pindars own poetic innovation is seated
firmly within a temporal frame. His current endeavor, like those of the future, relies on
divine revelation: -= -' (,,$%#&4 -$-' & >4+O& ,4>0'. / &V& 3' Q")*%41 %0&, (& ;#
9# %=& / -0"*' Those to come, may I reveal them clearly when it is time. For now we
can only hope, for telos rests with the god. (103-5). Once revealed, however, the tools
remain fixed for all to discover. So Pindar instructs his unspecified listener, another
unnamed tis to take up the role of reperformer through his own discoveries (107-15):
N,4 -' U85=,1& @&=,,:&
%48-?8A,#1 ?54+*? F:%E' [&4P
s0""4&= -# 54W u15?v& 54W |0948' n4513<& -' #I#85C' [",*'
z -' "#?,W' 54W "1)487 |484;c& 110
-4+ ;' H)' e-&4' Hp1"$>*? 54""+)"*?-*1
)$"1#' z -' }F*14 54W )<,4& 5=-4
""=3' #H8A,#1' (8#?&D& %=,,*&' a M' n30%#&.
[9# 5*6>*1,1& Q5&#?,*& )*,+&
#V -0"#1', 4n3D 3+3*1 54W -6J4& -#8)&D& 9"?5#K4&.

And as many [victories] to which Lycian Apollos altar, the lord ruling over the
Arcadians, will bear witness, and Pellana and Sikyon and Megara and the rich
cities below steep Aetna and Euboia, these, if you look, will you discover
throughout all of Hellas, more than a man could see. Come, join the dance with
light feet. O Zeus Teleios, grant reverence and the sweet fortune of delights.

The poems addressee will find the scripts of the victors deeds throughout the Greek
word and through them will be able to add his own light feet to the dance. Throught the
repetition of the verb heurisk, which guided the initial discussion of Corinthian
innovation, the model of Bellerophons discovery is now explicitly linked to Pindars
own poetic production. The poet has crafted a tool for the future, a script for reperformers
to discover and make anew.


39
Pindar claims to hurl his javelin like a rhombos, appropriating the whirling motion of the so-
called bull-roarer. The athletic tool and musical instrument are thus fused in his exuberant
metaphor: (%C 3' #I;d& @5$&-:& / 0&-4 $%F*& )487 ,5*)E& *I J8A / -7 )*""7 F0"#4
548-6&#1& J#8*K&. / |*+,41' 978 @9"4*;8$&*1' j5c& / T"1941;+341,+& -' QF4& ()+5*?8*'.
161
2. SPEAKING SHIELDS
In his appropriation of the tools of the athletic agn, Pindar adapts the sportsmens
apparatus to serve as models for the functioning of scripted poetics. The actual endeavors
of his laudandi are almost entirely displaced from his epinician odes, superseded by the
poets concern for his own complex undertaking. In the Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus
employs a similar technique, transformed for the stage. At the heart of the play he places
a series of paired speeches, each a description and interpretation of the shield of one of
the citys attackers. The speeches take up the tools as scripts for reperformance,
dramatizing the function of the scripted object when invested with its full mediating
power. By centering the action of his play on the attackers tools, Aeschylus displaces
nearly every other conceivable event from the drama. There is no battle, no encounter
between foes; the play consists solely of the playwrights dramatic meditation on his own
scripted poetics.
In contrast to Pindars Olympian 13, where Athenas first-person encoding formed the
crucial moment of the narrative, Aeschylus, in the Seven Against Thebes, wholly elides
the encoding event, positioning both author and tool offstage and outside of the dramatic
action. His concern is entirely with the complex process of reperformance and the
difficulty of accessing the encoder through the medium of a material object. For
Aeschylus it is not the yoking power of the bridle, but the dividing potential of the shield
that will serve as conceptual model for the inanimate script. In the plays central scene,
Eteocles encounters the unseen attackers of his city through their shield blazons, relying
on the intermediary instruments to gain access to the character of his foes. He attempts to
bridge the gap between friend and enemy through the very tools designed to be an
impenetrable defense, ensuring the separation of foes.
This division between Pindars and Aeschylus approach to the physicality of the
script is not surprising given the fact that the distinct genres in which they primarily
composed presented somewhat different problems for reperformance. Significantly, the
absence of a clearly demarcated authorial voice from tragedy as opposed to the strong
first-person statements of the Pindaric author-figure throughout his lyric compositions
results in a much more pointed concern about the how the author will be perceived
through a mediating text. In addition, the differentiated characters of drama necessitate a
162
certain polyphony in reperformance that complicates the arithmetic equivalence between
encoder and reperformer, even if the drama is not staged with a full ensemble cast. Hence
an additional layer of complexity is incorporated into the reperformers task of gaining
access to the encoder of his script. The obstacles to successful mediation between agents
separated by space and time are thus greater and more varied. The scriptory tool retains
the same properties within its material form, but the techn through which it achieves its
proper execution in reperformance becomes even less certain.
From the very outset of the play, the demarcation of the spatio-temporal distance
between the shields offstage encoding and onstage reperformance is a constant theme of
Seven Against Thebes. The play is notable for its rigid geography; the dramatic action is
claustrophobically contained within the walls of Thebes while the din of the marshalling
army rings all around.
40
The messenger introduces himself in the plays opening lines as
the one figure able to travel between the world of the stage, inside the citys walls, and
the unseen plane beyond: 5: ,4>{ -@5#K;#& (5 ,-84-*V >08:&, 4I-E' 54-$)-O' 3'
#e%' (9v -D& )849%=-:& (40-1).
41
Like the prophet Tiresias whose forewarning
Eteocles has just recalled (&V& 3' M' ~ %=&-1' >O,+& 24), the messengers literal eye will
provide those within the city with a kind of mantic insight into the world beyond the
stage (66-8):
5@9v -7 "*1)7 )1,-E& Y%#8*,5$)*&
/>;4"%E& fP:, 54W ,4>O&#+t "$9*?
#n3v' -7 -D& ;684;#& @F"4FR' Q,b.

And I will make my eye a trusted day-scout for the future, and you will be safe
knowing the affairs beyond the gates through the clarity of my report.

But within the equivalence between Oedipus seer and Eteocles lies an important
difference. While the blind mantis perceived the future by sound alone, as we are
reminded by Eteocles description,
42
the messengers insight will be emphatically visual;
he will convert the objects that he has seen, namely the images on the attackers shield

40
Bacon (1964), Thalmann (1978) pp. 38-42. The overly (and unsustainably) rigid geography of
tragic Thebes is treated in the seminal article Zeitlin (1990). See also Adrisano (2002), Goldhill
(2007).
41
Bacon (1964) p. 29.
42
(+' UC. &:%D& 54W >8#,+&, ,031) !PF$,/ J8O,-O8+*?' 8&1;4' @p#?3#K -0J&b 25-6)
163
blazons, into a logos for Eteocles.
43
On the one hand, the mention of Tiresias at the plays
outset is a reminder of the trilogys two earlier plays that cast Eteocles as a reperformer
of the deeds of his father and grandfather.
44
But the messengers literal ophthalmos also
establishes a contrast with those earlier events that brings the uniquely visual and
material qualities of Eteocles endeavor into relief.
45
The tools must be reperformed by
the messenger and Eteocles (and the audience) will only encounter with them verbally,
46

yet the inanimate materiality of the shields is fundamental to their representation. Unlike
the living omens that speak to true seers, the shields are mute tools that can only mediate
between living agents. The meaning of the shields is locked within inarticulate metal until
it is brought back to life by the messengers ekphrases. The messengers eye is capable of
sight, but not insight. And as inanimate tools, the shields require an extra degree of
reperformance which will translate them into voice before the work of interpretative
reperformance is possible. The uninspired prophecy of the messengers speeches brings
the tools to life upon the stage and thus transforms the mediating objects into an
ekphrastic battlefield.
The messengers ekphrastic descriptions of the attackers shields exhibit an obvious
epic inheritance, drawing on the rich tradition epitomized by the famous depiction of
Achilles shield at Iliad 18.478-608 and evident throughout the extant epic corpus.
47
In
contrast to earlier models, the shields of the Seven are decorated with words as well as
images. Three shields bear lettering as part of their blazons and all are framed within a
discourse of material communication that draws heavily on the notion of a written object.
The explicit incorporation of writing into the Redepaare distinguishes the scene from its

43
This is, in some respects, a hyperbolic rendering of the basic function of the messenger as
defined by de Jong (1991) pp. 9-10.
44
Eteocles reenacts and condenses his fathers and his fathers fathers experiences by treating
the emblems of the shields as riddles and by converting these riddles into curse and oracle.
Zeitlin (1982) p. 20. Also Hutchinson (1985) ad 24-7.
45
The prominent visual component is noted by Benardete (1968) pp. 13-14 who draws a further
contrast with Eteocles himself, who must manage the tiller of the ship of state with his eyes
open. We cannot, of course, rule out the possibility that such visual/verbal play also occupied a
central position in Aeschylus construction of the two earlier plays, Laius and Oedipus (as,
indeed, it does, though in quite different terms, in Sophocles OT). The materiality of the shields
is stressed by Steiner (1994) pp. 49-60.
46
Thus they cannot be thought of as props, as is argued by Chaston (2010).
47
Grtner (1976), Becker (1995).
164
epic forebears, but it also makes the Seven unique within the extant Pindaric and
Aeschylean corpora as the most extended representation of explicit, rather than
figurative, written communication. Since the shields are only present on the stage as
scripts for the messengers words, the shield inscriptions are represented as speeches, and
are reported in the messengers ekphrases in oratio recta and obliqua. The connection
between dictional mode and considerations of writing set out in the first section of this
study is thus unambiguously placed not only at the heart of the play but at the climax of
the trilogy of which it was the final play.
48

The messenger does not simply report on the shields, but offers a picture of both the
blazon and its encoding agent, turning both oral and written, flesh and metal, components
of his account into texts for reperformance. The juxtaposition of the two elements of the
scripts encoding offers an unclouded glimpse of what more literal scripts particularly
fully mimetic, dramatic scripts normally adumbrate: the reperformers uncertain
relationship to both the flesh-and-blood encoder of the script and the material tool which
preserves and transmits his words.
While the messenger examines the shields offstage, Eteocles and the Chorus of
Theban women wage a verbal battle that prefigures that of the Redepaare.
49
From within
the city walls, the Chorus react to a very different visual messenger arriving in the form
of the dust that rises into the air from the marshalling army ([&4?3*' ,4>R' Q-?%*'
[99#"*' 82).
50
The extended lyric expression of panic that follows is sparked by this
visual signal, but as the song progresses the Choruss fear is increasingly concentrated on
the terrifying sounds that meet their ears: ~)"$5-?).-W J8+%)-#1 F*=& (84);
51
@5*6#-'
a *I5 @5*6#-' @,)+3:& 5-6)*&; (100); 5-6)*& 303*854
52
)=-49*' *IJ j&E' 3*8$'

48
On the Labdaid trilogy, see Thalmann (1978) pp. 23-6.
49
The time of the messengers absence is in fact dramatically represented by the Choruss song,
as noted by Nnlist (2009) pp. 86-7.
50
The image of a rising dust-cloud is common in Homeric battle description, e.g. Il. 3.10-4, as are
descriptions of battle din, to which the Septem Chorus soon turn, e.g. 3.1-9 the introduction to the
passage just cited.
51
The text is uncertain, but see Hutchinson (1985) ad loc. If -W (or ,W GKQ
2pcPsscr
) stands, it
would represent a clear echo of Eteocles earlier description of Teiresias: +' UC. &:%D&.
52
5-6)*& 303*854 is the text printed by Page and thus accepted here. If it is the correct reading,
as opposed to 303*154 (suggested by Askew and preferred by Murray), I believe that the idea of
sight must be understood as a metaphorical attempt to render the vividness of the Choruss sonic
perception. So Hutchinson (1985) ad loc.
165
(104).
53
The sonorous description presents the military hardware the whirling chariot
axles, the clanging swords and spears, the blasting trumpets and braying horses, and,
above all, the shields in aural form, representing the materiality of the martial tools in
its sonic, rather than visual, aspect. Yet, as Eteocles violent reaction to the women makes
clear, their vivid descriptions bring the unseen Argive attackers, and more specifically
their weapons, into the city and onto the stage. The exchange thus anticipates the
messengers own introduction of objects from the outside, in the form of his ekphrastic
reports.
54
Like Cassandras visions, the Argive attackers offstage emerge from an unseen
realm that encroaches on the spatio-temporal stability of the drama. But the unseen
figures of the Seven Against Thebes are not uninvited visitors: they are intentionally
conveyed onto the stage so as to be translated and interpreted in the hic et nunc. And it is
through the material mediation of the shields, which provide a bridge between what is
present and what is not, that the staged characters and audience alike are invited to
experience them.
The messenger loses no time upon his return, immediately commencing with his
ekphrastic reports and inaugurating the series of seven paired speeches which constitute
the scene. The order in which the shields are presented, culminating in the inevitable
pairing of brother against brother, has been the subject of extensive study in the last half-
century.
55
The multivalent concept of kosmos, introduced by Eteocles at the opening of
his first response (397), will be one of the central themes of the exchange.
56
Yet to
understand how the complex orderings of the scene are constructed, we must first
examine the tripartite structure of author, reperformer, and shield that is the sustained and
invariable foundation of the Redepaare. By working progressively through the shields of
seven heroes at seven gates, Aeschylus is able to distribute across these multiple
iterations the polyphony of meaning that Pindar assembled in the single image of the
bridle. In so doing, the dramatic poet is able to tease out subtle variations that are not

53
For more detailed discussion of this introductory scene, see Benardete (1967), Thalmann
(1978) pp. 85-93, and more recently Edmunds (2002), Stehle (2005).
54
The connection is noted by Bacon (1964) p. 29. So too, Zeitlin (1982) p. 30: These two scenes
are both opposites and doublets of each other. As a confrontation between two opposing attitudes,
the first scene is, in fact, a rehearsal of the other.
55
Benardete (1968), Zeitlin (1982), Vidal-Naquet (1988), Chiarini (2002).
56
Zeitlin (1982) pp. 55-7.
166
elaborated on in Pindars concise narrative. At the same time, the profusion of elements
the Argive and their seven shields, the messengers report, the responses of Eteocles and
the Chorus, the Theban shields and men who are chosen by Eteocles to face the attackers
can distract from the basic formulation of scriptory poetics which underpins the scene.
The essential components of encoder, tool, and reperformer that constitute the
scriptory system are already set out in the first paired speeches, despite the fact that the
shield device is devoid of lettering. In fact, the simplicity of the shield device,
representing the night sky with moon and stars, permits a thorough appreciation of the
complexity of scripted poetics that the scene entails. The messengers reperformance
seeks to bring both author and script onto the stage through his embodied verbal
representation. But the distinction becomes blurred, and Eteocles is unable to
discriminate between the encoder and the object that he has produced. The messenger
distinguishes, albeit in similar terms, the qualities especially the sonic register that are
produced by the brutish Argive, Tydeus, from those that belong to his brazen shield and
trumpet.
57
Eteocles, however, focuses all of his attention on the shield, as if the tool were
his sole interlocutor. Although he starts his speech by dismissing the power of the blazon,
Eteocles soon makes clear that he understands the shield to convey its own verbal
message, as if inscribed with speech like the shields of the subsequent warriors. He takes
the messengers claim that the shield device is huperphrn, a word without any intrinsic
linguistic resonances, to mean that the shield is boastful huperkompos, speaking in silent
words. At first he imbues the shield itself with agency, calling the nux (night) of the
blazon a mantis eponumos; the image on the shield has become a sign capable of
foretelling its own future. Then, in an even bolder conflation, he claims that the shield
represents the speech of Tydeus himself (400-6):
54W &65-4 -46-O& & "09#1' ()' @,)+3*'
[,-8*1,1 %48%4+8*?,4& *I84&*V 5?8#K&
-=J' & 90&*1-* %=&-1' _&*+4 -1&+.
#n 978 ;4&$&-1 &dP ()' />;4"%*K' )0,*1,
- -*1 >08*&-1 ,{%' H)085*%)*& -$3#
90&*1-' & /8;D' (&3+5:' -' ()c&?%*&, 405
54I-E' 54;' 4H-*V -A&3' gF81& %4&-#6,#-41

57
The fearful, bronze bells on Tydeus shield shriek out, eager for battle: H)' @,)+3*' 3C - /
J4"5A"4-*1 #I:M&0C5 5c3:&#' >$F*& (385/6).
167

And this night that you say is upon his shield, shining with the stars of heaven,
soon may this folly be his mantis. For if night should fall upon his eyes in death,
then this boastful symbol would be right and justly named for him who bears it
and he would prophesy this violence for himself.

The messengers reperformance of the inanimate image instills the inanimate tool with so
rich and convincing a verbal texture that the man behind the implement is no longer fully
recognizable. Eteocles directs himself towards Tydeus, but it is the speech of his shield
that guides his response. Tydeus is boastful, but only through the language of his tool. He
foretells his own death, but in encoded, symbolic speech that is only articulated through
the messengers reperformance. The fixed images on the blazon are more powerful
transmitters of sense than the man who fashioned them.
58
The degree to which Tydeus
and his shield device have become inseparable in Eteocles perception is made clear
when, as a result, he sets against Tydeus a man who hates boastful speech: ,-?9*V&;'
H)08>8*&4' "$9*?' (410). The reiteration of the messengers term huperphrn, now
explicitly linked to the realm of logos, and more specifically of human speech, serves as a
kind of gloss on Eteocles reperformative fusing of author and inanimate script. Eteocles
makes no mention of the shield of Melanippos, the Theban champion chosen to face
Tydeus. The defender is selected based on his inborn character: ,)48-D& 3' @)'
@&38D&, & l8O' (>#+,4-*, / +y:%' @&#K-41, 5=8-4 3' Q,-' (9Jc81*' (412-3). For
those outside the walls, Eteocles must perceive the men through their tools; inside he
knows the man.
The conflation of warrior and shield is only possible because both the shield and its
bearer remain offstage and unseen. Both thus become objects of the messengers
ekphrastic description which translates his first-hand perception into a verbal
performance of their absence.
59
The mans voice is subsumed by that of the tool, the

58
The notion of shield production in the Redepaare, like that of writing at the time, makes little
distinction between the man who designs the blazon and the one who effects the physical labor.
59
The contrast between seen and unseen is suggestively explored in the stimulating, albeit wildly
speculative, reading of David Wiles. Building on the work of Bacon (1964), Wiles has suggested
that the entire Redepaare was staged so as to be animated by the departure of Theban warriors,
equipped with spectacular shields. The literal arming of the Theban defenders would thus
highlight the wholly verbal manner in which the Argive warriors and their shields are presented
within the play. I would certainly agree that the Theban shields are nowhere subjected to the play
168
mediating object that will bring his words (be they articulate or, as with Tydeus, merely
symbolic) onto the stage. This basic dynamic, in which the onstage reperformers merge
warrior and shield, encoder and material script, is repeated throughout the subsequent
paired speeches. The conflation of the two unseen figures, the mute tool and the flesh-
and-blood warrior, is not a failure of the messengers presentation or of Eteocles
interpretation; it is a sign of the inherent nature of reperformance which cannot but take
this stance in order to bring the script back to life.
The necessity of merging encoder and message becomes evident as the introduction
of true written messages further expands the range of possibilities for communication
through the intermediary. Three of the Argive attackers bear writing on their shield
blazons. Capaneus, posted to the second gate, bears the image of a man who speaks in
golden letters I will set the city aflame. (J8?,*K' 3C >:&#K 98=%%4,1& s8A,:
)$"1&. 434). At the third gate, Eteoclus too carries a man boasting in a string of letters
that not even Ares will cast him from the ramparts (984%%=-:& (& P?""4F4K', / M'
*I3' & l8O' ,>' (5F="*1 )?89:%=-:& 468-9). And finally, the shield of Polyneices,
the final attacker to be named, displays the goddess Dike expressing her support for a
warrior: I will lead this man into the city and he will be returned to the home of his
birth (B+5O 3' [8' #i&4+ >O,1&, M' -7 98=%%4-4 / "09#1 !4-=P: 3' [&384 -$&3#
54W )$"1& / fP#1 )4-84& 3:%=-:& -' ()1,-8*>='. 646-8). The material properties of
the writing on each shield are emphasized in the messengers reports. The letters on
Capaneus and Polyneices blazons are said to be fashioned in gold (J8?,*K' []
98=%%4,1& 434; J8?,$-#?5-4 98=%%4-4 660) and Eteoclus shield is praised for its
craftsmanship ((,JO%=-1,-41 3' @,)W' *I ,%158E& -8$)*& 465). But at the same time,
the messenger reports on the letters as if they were speaking (>:&#K 434; "09#1 646) or,
in the case of Eteoclus, as if their bearer were speaking through them (F* 3C J*]-*'
468). And in keeping with this notion, the letters are presented as speech acts in the
messengers accounts, or rather, scripts for speech acts to which he himself gives voice in
the course of his reperformance. The distinction between oratio recta and obliqua follows

between visual and verbal register that is applied throughout to the shields of the attackers. But
without any clear indication from the text, I find it difficult to credit the idea that the warriors
were armed onstage throughout the drama. Wiles (2007) pp. 267-9.
169
the structure set out in the response to Tydeus shield: the blazons themselves speak
through the messenger in the unmediated hic et nunc while the shield whose words are
attributed to the warrior, Eteoclus, are set at one remove through indirect speech.
In addition to their written communications, the three lettered shields all depict men,
rather than gods or cosmic forces, on their blazons. This second shared attribute further
sets them apart from the other shields described in the scene. All three of the metallic
warriors function as mimetic doublet[s] of the flesh-and-blood warriors who bear
them.
60
The added layer of correlation results in an especially robust conflation of the
shield devices with their written messages and the heroes whom they mirror in their
anthropomorphic images. The shields are themselves scriptory tools, but through their
iconographic representation of both encoder and his words, they are able to expose the
performative nature hidden within the inanimate object. Far from being able to give voice
to their own verbal expression, the shield blazons explicitly incorporate the figure of a
human actor to produce their lettered messages. In this respect, Aeschylus further
distances the shields from the oggetti parlanti popular at the time. In his excellent
treatment of the relationship between the ekphrasitc shields of the Redepaare and other
shields from the period, Carmine Catenacci demonstrates that Aeschylus sets out a series
of shields unlike any that existed at the time, inventing his own wholly poetic set of
images to adorn the blazons.
61
The imagined objects represent a kind of static drama in
which the anthropomorphic figure depicted upon the blazon articulates the action which
he is performing or about to perform.
62
Not unlike the painted singers on red-figure
vases,
63
the ekphrastic shields of the Redepaare pour forth their words as if in the act of

60
Zeitlin (1982) p. 74.
61
Catenacci (2004) pp. 170-5. When writing is found on physical shields from this era, it is
generally employed for simple identification, either of the figure represented on the blazon (a
technique familiar from vase painting) or of the shields bearer, as is the case with the letter-
device shields which became popular in the fifth century for polis identification. Alternatively,
writing on shields is found expressing kalos pais phrases which appear as unconnected to the
imagery of the shield device (again, similar to the kindred kalos inscriptions found in vase
painting from the period).
62
Catenacci (2004) p. 175, translation mine.
63
The parallel is drawn by Catenacci (2004) p. 175. On singing vases, Lissarrague (1990) chap. 6
shows the famous image of a chorus of six armed men, each equipped with a different shield
blazon, seated upon dolphins each singing the same (self-identifying) words, s Bmu.
Also Lissarrague (2007) pp. 152-3.
170
enunciation. The speaking figures show the origins of the words, reflecting the role of the
encoder in producing the words. At the same time they gesture towards the necessity of
reperformance to give true voice back to the words inscribed on the object. The lettered
shields thus incorporate the essential quality of the written script, which cannot properly
be separated from the performances it is intended to facilitate.
In spatial terms, the ekphrastic descriptions raise the problem of the authors physical
absence from the scene of reperformance. The action encoded in the blazon must be
completed by an agent other than its creator while still maintaining a connection to the
man behind the shield. The tools convey the identity of the warriors and thus enable the
reperformer to communicate with the encoder of the words that he is voicing. This
mediated contact is made possible by the conflation of the warrior and his tool, an
operation which threatens to place the agency of the encoder in the hands of the distant
man who will reperform his words. The imbalance, and its cost to the encoder, is evident
in the depictions of the first two lettered images. The shields are brought to life,
conveying the voices of the men behind them, but the active reperformance results in a
violent perversion of the encoders intentions.
In the case of Capaneus, the warriors impious boasting, reported by the messenger in
oratio obliqua, is set in parallel to the speech inscribed on his shield. As Deborah Steiner
notes, the clear similarities between the two expressions of boastful arrogance allow the
voice of the living man to be integrated into the no less daunting message of the
shield.
64
Just as the hero finds reflection in the naked man on his blazon, his own
ephemeral utterance is matched with and subsumed by the one that is fixed upon his
shield.
65
Through his own verbal play, Eteocles deepens the conflation that is already
apparent from the messengers report. The Theban king attributes the nakedness of the
warrior on the shield blazon to the voice of the living man (5@)*9?%&=y:& ,-$%4
441).
66
The manner of the connection is specifically that of speech, the overriding focus

64
Steiner (1994) p. 52.
65
Zeitlin (1982) pp. 64-5.
66
Zeitlin (1982) p. 67.
171
of the entire response.
67
For Eteocles, the man and shield function as one and speak with
a single voice. Thus by disarming the shields verbal force, Eteocles is able to defeat its
bearer. He hears the tool, but speaks to the man behind it. Similar in effect is the
representation of Eteoclus, whose single, written vaunt is turned against the two men
who will be vanquished in battle: the real warrior and the hoplite on the blazon.
68
In both
cases the conquest of the shield cannot be distinguished from the triumph over the man.
The final exchange brings us to the inevitable pairing of brother against brother at the
seventh gate. Now Eteocles must step into the reperformance as an agent in a manner that
he has heretofore eschewed, taking up the role of defender against the device. But in this
heightened exchange, Eteocles will reject the established mode of reperformance through
his refusal to accept the mediating function of the shield. The precarious nature of
Eteocles active participation in the unseen script of his foe is compounded by the
mirrored identities of the brothers, whose unsustainable reduplication is a product of the
unstable arithmetic of the house of Laius.
69
The messengers description of Polyneices
and his diploun sma resembles that of Capaneus insofar as the writing of the shield is
paired with the words of the hero himself. The warrior is once again conflated with the
human figure on his blazon. But unlike the earlier lettered shields, the speech depicted is
not of the wrought human figure but of the goddess who accompanies him. Polyneices
own speech, reported in oratio obliqua, is thick with generic resonances, mingling prayer,
boast, and song in staccato outbursts.
70
Matching his brothers excitable speech, Eteocles
too resorts to emotionally charged prayer and lament. But when he begins his proper
(prepei) response, turning his attention to the shield, Eteocles concern is not for the hero,
but for the speaking goddess on the blazon. Unable to contemplate sharing the shield with
his brother, just as he is unwilling to share the crown, Eteocles does not accept the script
as it has been encoded. Instead of confronting the warrior and vanquishing him through
the medium of his tool, Eteocles attempts to displace his brother within the shields

67
54W -3# 5$%)L 5083*' [""* -+5-#-41. (437); Y 9"D,,' @"O;R' 9+9&#-41 54-A9*8*'.
(439); #n' *I84&E& /)0%)#1 9#9:&7 O&W 5?%4+&*&-' Q)O (442-3); ,-$%489$' (,-' [94&
(447).
68
Zeitlin (1982) pp. 76-7.
69
The phrase is coined by Zeitlin, who explores how Oedipus status as both one and many
informs all of the dramas set in Thebes. Zeitlin (1990) pp. 139-40.
70
Stehle (2005) p. 118.
172
iconography. He is unwilling to reperform his brothers script, forcing both men to an
unsustainable perversion of the mediated relationship that they share through the tool.
Eteocles rejection of the mediating power of the shields in his confrontation with his
brother is enabled by a structural shift set out by three non-lettered shields which precede
the final pairing. Like the earlier warriors, the identities of these Argive attackers are
closely aligned with the iconography of their shield blazons, but they display a much
different, and more complex, linguistic or performative conflation which further develops
the conceptual reach of the scriptory tool. The terrible Hippomedon, whose fearful size is
reflected in the writhing coils of the fearsome serpent, Typhon, is almost entirely
displaced in both the messengers report and Eteocles response by the seemingly living
image of his blazon.
71
In a lone exception from his established practice, Eteocles makes
recourse to the shield blazon of his Theban defender, pairing Hippomedon with a man
who bears the figure of Zeus, the vanquisher of Typhon, on his own shield. The
remarkable vitality of the serpent blazon elicits fear in the messenger (Q>81P4
31&A,4&-*' *I5 ["":' (8D. I shuddered at its whirling, I will not deny it. 490).
72
But
his wonder is directed towards the craftsman of the shield, who, for the first and only
time within the Redepaare, is distinguished from the warrior who bears the device (491-
2):
~ ,O%4-*?89E' 3' *} -1' #I-#"R' [8' &
N,-1' -$3' Q89*& X)4,#& )8E' @,)+31,

The blazon-maker was no cheap-jack, whoever it was who fixed this work upon
the shield.

As the power of the inanimate tool increases, the warrior behind the shield is eclipsed.
His role in the creation of the image is elided as an unnamed and unknowable maker
(N,-1') takes priority in the mind of the messenger. Likewise, Eteocles no longer sees the

71
As will be shown in the next chapter, the snake is an especially potent symbol of the scripts
need for animation. The living quality of the serpent on Hippomedons blazon is further reflected
in the serpent simile which begins Eteocles response: )8D-*& %C& 954 s4""=', -'
@9J+)-*"1'/ )6"41,1 9#+-:&, @&38E' (J;4+8*?,' gF81&, / #e8P#1 &#*,,D& M' 38=5*&-4
36,J1%*& (501-3).
72
In fact, so compelling is the image that the messenger begins to speak about the shield in the
midst of his description of the warrior and has to correct himself so that his listeners understand:
))*%03*&-*' ,J{%4 54W %094' -6)*' / z": 3C )*""A&, @,)+3*' 565"*& "09: (488-9).
173
Argive as acting through his shield, but rather as collaterally implicated in the true battle
waged between the blazons: #n #6' 9# S?>D 548-#8c-#8*' %=Jb. / #n5E' 3C )8=P#1&
[&384' 3' @&-1,-=-4' (518-9).
Parthenopaeus, the ambiguous metic who takes up the fifth gate, displays an
awareness of the intricacies of the script that places the Argive in a much more
demonstrably active engagement with his tool than has been seen heretofore. Although
the two figures on his shield, the Sphinx and the Theban whom she has conquered,
prefigure the 31)"*V& ,{%4 of Polyneices, his stance with regards to the blazon more
closely anticipates that of Amphiaraos, the sixth warrior who will refuse to bear a
message on his shield. Parthenopaeus does not put his faith in the shield, but in his sword
which he values sacrilegiously more than Zeus and above his own eyes (529-30). His
trust in his tools presents an unsettling new understanding of Eteocles earlier claim that
signs do not make wounds and warriors bells and plumes do not bite without a sword
(398-9).
73
Now the fields of weapons and symbols are joined in the subtle scriptory
perspective of this ambiguous warrior. The opposition on which Eteocles based his boast
is shown to be a mirage. Even as the shield fails to provide Parthenopaeus with a mimetic
doublet, the heros own body appropriates the iconographic power of the inanimate tool.
The messenger devotes extra time to the description of the young heros appearance; his
lovely face, his downy cheeks. But Parthenopaeus fierce gorgon-eye is his true shield
blazon,
74
and reveals his true character to the messenger (536-7):
~ 3.%$&, *} -1 )48;0&:& ()c&?%*&
>8$&O%4, 9*89E& 3.%%.QJ:&,

He has a savage mind, in no way befitting his virginal name, and a gorgons eye.

Parthenopaeus body is already inscribed with its own mimetic doublet. The man-boy is
able to represent himself through the flesh and thus has no need of a mirror in his blazon.
Instead, Parthenopaeus adorns his shield with an image of his enemy (>D-4 !43%#+:&
f&4 543). The shield is his boast, an iconographic translation of his imagined speech. The
shields arrogant stance does not overshadow Parthenopaeus; it stands in front of his

73
Zeitlin (1982) p. 105.
74
The connection between 9*89$' and *89c/9*89D)1' is made by Hutchinson (1985) ad loc.
174
body as an added layer of protection: &#13*' (& J4"5O"=-L / ,=5#1, 5?5":-
,c%4-*' )8*F"A%4-1, (539-40) Parthenopaeus remains outside of the action that his
blazon depicts. He is not implicated in the scene, but rather produces the script that will
guide the action for reperformance by an anticipated foe.
Amphiaraos adopts a stance similar to that of Parthenopaeus, but his method of
preemption is unique in a number of respects. The all-bronze shield the seer carries is
famously devoid of a blazon since Amphiaraos rejects the world of semblances for the
world of reality. Equally important is the fact that Amphiaraos is the only attacker whose
own words (rather than those on his shield) are related by the messenger in oratio recta.
Within the highly charged verbal arena of the Redepaare the seers ability to speak with
his own voice, rather than with his shield, takes on an extraordinary significance. By
refusing to entrust his words to the material of his shield, Amphiaraos insists that the
messenger bring his own, unmediated speech back to Eteocles as his report. And the
messenger takes pains to make clear the origins of the words: "09#1 3C -*V-' Q)*' 317
,-$%4 But the speech of the prophet cannot be understood apart from the complex
temporal structure that he, alone of the attackers, is able to perceive, and which grounds
the individual tools of scripted absence within time as well as space.
Both Parthenopaeus and Amphiaraos, in their different ways, look forward to the
inevitable reperformance of their blazons when they eventually encounter their unseen
foes. The forward-looking perspective of the shield devices is already reflected in
Eteocles response to the first shield, which he claimed would prophesy (%4&-#6,#-41
406) its bearers death.
75
In the subsequent written shield texts, this proleptic stance is
adopted by the blazons themselves, which speak in the future tense of actions yet to be
carried out.
76
The significance of his shared temporal perspective which arises from the
scripted nature of the shields and is inseparable from Eteocles own interpretive and
kledonomantic engagement with them, can only be fully appreciated in light of the one
other type of shield-writing found in the fifth century: post-bellum inscriptions on shields
taken as spoils.
77
It was a common practice throughout antiquity, attested in both literary

75
The future tense, often noted by critics, contributes to the overall proleptic tone.
76
)8A,: 434; *I3' & (5F="*1 469; 54-=P: fP#1 647-8.
77
Catenacci (2004) p. 174.
175
and material sources, to write atop the captured arms of a foe as a way of turning the tool
into a dedicatory agalma and victory monument.
78
Catenacci notes the temporal contrast
between the shields of the Seven Against Thebes and such retrospective testimonials.
Rather than record an action that has already been accomplished, Aeschylus shields are
inscribed with words that look forward with performative intent: their writing is intended
to do battle, not to preserve its memory.
79

The complex temporal interplay is illuminated by Eteocles reaction to the boasting
shield of Eteoclus which we have already touched upon briefly above. Incorporating both
victims into the fixed materiality of the scriptory tool, Eteocles looks forward to their
display as spoils of war (478-9):
a 54W 36.[&38# 54W )$"1,%.().@,)+3*'
j"v& "4>68*1' 3D%4 5*,%A,#1 )4-8$'.

So taking two men and the city on his shield, he will decorate the house of his
father with spoils.

Displayed in this way what the shield shows is literally true: Ares cannot cast this image
from the ramparts where it will remain fixed as decorative spoilia.
80
The Theban seizes
upon the temporal naivet of his opponent by appropriating the performative voice of the
shield. Paradoxically, his strategy takes advantage of the tools scripted character in order
to deprive it of the temporal function inherent in the object qua script. When Eteocles
reperformance affixes the shield to the Theban house of Megareus, he vitiates the agency
of the blazons author and insists that his shield function as a monument rather than a
tool.
Eteoclus blazon is re-inscribed by Eteocles in reperformance, turning the meaning
of its words into something entirely unanticipated by its author. Neither Parthenopaeus
nor Amphiaraos leave themselves open to this possibility. Parthenopaeus is fully aware
that his shield will come into the performative and interpretive purview of his enemies.
Thus he anticipates the appropriation of his blazon by preemptively placing the image of

78
Notably, the literal retrospective inscription of the shields is imagined in Euripides account of
the myth (Eur.Phoen.573-6). See Steiner (1994) p. 76.
79
Catenacci (2004) p. 174: Non sono comparabili con le tante inscrizioni dedicatorie apposte
sugli scudi dopo la battaglia. Gli scudi dei Sette sono inscritti per la battaglia.
80
Benardete (1968) p. 8.
176
his enemy on the shield so that the greatest number of missiles will hit that man (M'
)"#K,-' ()' @&38W -3' n=)-#,;41 F0"O. 544). In this way it will not be the encoder, but
the reperformer himself who will face the uncertain fate of future performative iterations.
But the temporal span of Parthenopaeus shield also looks backwards to the history of
Thebes and of its delivery from the hated Sphinx at the hands of a man who only plunged
the city into greater hardship. The selection of the Sphinx is no coincidence, connecting
Parthenopaeus threatening blazon to the past of the city and to the house of Laius in
particular.
81
That this history was most likely treated, whether as a central or peripheral
theme, in the preceding two plays of the trilogy only heightens the temporal authority of
the tool, establishing a clear connection between the ekphrastic script and the scripted
drama in which it is located.
The divinely inspired prophet, Amphiaraos, looks to the future without the aid of a
tool. His mantic eye is able to see his own future as well as that of those around him. He
foretells his own downfall and that of Polyneices and declares the Argive endeavor
hateful to gods and men. More importantly, the seemingly unscripted temporal mobility
of Amphiaraos speech is deeply interwoven with the order of the Redepaare itself and
thus with Aeschylus own scripted poem. The messengers report on Amphiaraos begins
not with an account of his visions of the future, but with the hyperbolic, asyndetic
catalogue of insults that the seer directs at Tydeus. In the speech, presented in oratio
obliqua, Amphiaraos blames Tydeus for the Argive misadventure, looking back to his
earlier poor advice to Adrastus (571-5):
545*K,1 F=y#1 )*""7 S?30:' F+4&
-E& @&38*>$&-O&, -E& )$"#:' -48=5-*84,
%091,-*& l89#1 -D& 545D& 313=,54"*&,
81&6*' 5"O-{84, )8$,)*"*& $&*?,
545D& 3' U38=,-L -D&3# F*?"#?-A81*&.

He addresses Tydeus with many insults [calling him] murderer, disturber of the
city, the greatest teacher of evil in Argos, conjurer of the Furies, servant of
slaughter, and Adrastus council in these [present] evils.

The insults incorporate an Argive history that is otherwise entirely opaque within the

81
Zeitlin (1982) pp. 102-3.
177
play.
82
At the same time, they recall the appearance of Amphiaraos in the messengers
first report, on the selfsame savage Tydeus. There Amphiaraos checked the unreflective
impatience of the great fighter, refusing to let him progress without the sanction of the
omens. The responsion of the two reports gives an indication of the complex temporal
structure of the scene as a whole. The ordering and regimentation of the Argive heroes as
presented by the messenger has more than one dimension, as is made clear by his first
account of Amphiaraos (375-9):
"09*1%' & #n3v' #] -7 -D& (&4&-+:&,
Z' -' (& )6"41' f54,-*' #e"OJ#& )="*&.
S?3#d' %C& ^3O )8E' )6"41,1 s8*1-+,1&
F80%#1, )$8*& 3' ,%O&E& *I5 ( )#8<&
~ %=&-1' *I 978 ,>=914 9+9&#-41 54"=.

I may speak knowing well the affairs of our attackers, how each obtained his lot
by the gates. Tydeus roars by the Proetean gates, but the seer will not permit him
to cross the Ismene, for the sacrifices are not propitious.

The messenger controls the speech that he delivers to Eteocles, but outside the city gates
Amphiaraos is the first author of the Argive battle line. Now, hearing the seers belatedly
reported speech to Tydeus, our attention is drawn to the restructuring power that the
messenger has deployed throughout his ekphrasitc reperformance. Together, these two
portraits of Amphiaraos produce the perception of an inconsistency between the
messengers onstage, ekphrastic reperformance and the unseen and unmediated ordering
and encoding of the shields that takes place beyond the dramatic action. The kosmos of
the scene is that of reperformance, to which even the prophet with his unadorned shield is
made subject.
As author of the order, Amphiaraos mantic voice extends from the first Argive
champion to the last. The empty blazon of the seer allows his words to travel throughout
the shields of the other Argive heroes, encompassing their collective future in the
pervasive capacity of his prophetic vision.
83
His instructions to Tydeus inaugurate the

82
Our evidence for the background to Tydeus and Polyneices marriages to the daughters of
Adrastus is detailed by Hutchinson (1985) ad loc.
83
As Zeitlin observes, Amphiaraos shield continues to signify even in its silence in fact,
because of its silence. Zeitlin (1982) p. 115. The shield is like his prophetic eye, which sees
beyond the confines of time and space.
178
Redepaare, and in his speech, reperformed by the messenger onstage, he anticipates
Eteocles response to the final shield. The mantis grants Eteocles his insight into
Polyneices blazon, while his shield presents a model of the inherent interchangeability of
the scriptory tool. His empty blazon can contain those of all the other warriors, and this
permeability renders the tool a more potent script than the impervious vaunting devices
alongside which it will be mustered.
84
And as the unseen correlate to the structuring,
analytical role played onstage by Eteocles throughout the Redepaare,
85
Amphiaraos and
his blank shield unwittingly set out the script for the Thebans final, corrupted
reperformance. By questioning the support of Dike in his censure of Polyneices,
Amphiaraos provides Eteocles with the language of interchangeablity that will allow him
to usurp his brothers shield as his own. What justice (-+' 3+5O), Amphiaraos asks
Polyneices in the hic et nunc of the messengers reperformance, will extinguish its
maternal spring? (584). Polyneices may bear Justice on his blazon, but what Justice and
more importantly for whom?
For Eteocles, the seers question suggests that there is a fissure between scriptory tool
and encoder, an opening through which he, as a reperformer of the shield, attempts to
enter into the encoders realm. In adopting this new stance, Eteocles rejects the structure
of scripted reperformance on which he has relied thus far. He tries to assume the role of
Amphiaraos and to see the scriptory tool as something not yet fixed. But Eteocles
temporal insight, unlike that of the mantis, is entirely reliant on the scriptory tools at his
disposal. As he tries to dislodge himself from the confines of Polyneices shield, his
interpretive powers falter.
86
He reaches for the wrong tool, using the language of the
mantis to elide his brothers agency.
87
At first it would seem that Eteocles questions the
authenticity of Justice, but it is in truth her support for his brother which he calls into

84
One cannot but think of the tradition, not mentioned in Aeschylus play but certainly known to
him, in which Amphiaraos is not killed in battle, but swallowed into the earth along with his
chariot. This personal characteristic of mediation and unique movement between spheres is
certainly reflected in the powerful symbolism of his blank shield device.
85
Zeitlin (1982) pp. 116, 119-26.
86
The point is made with a somewhat different emphasis by Steiner (1994) p. 59.
87
He adopts not only Amphiaraos questioning of Dike and expression of distain for the
expedition against Thebes, but the seers focus on Polyneices name and his relation to the land of
Thebes. Zeitlin, by contrast, sees Parthenopaeus as Eteocles main model in this speech. Zeitlin
(1982) pp. 142-4.
179
doubt (662-71):
#n 3' Y B1E' )4K' )48;0&*' B+5O )48{&
Q89*1' (5#+&*? 54W >8#,+&, -=J' & -$3' &
@""' *}-# &1& >?9$&-4 %O-8$;#& ,5$-*&,
*}-' (& -8*>4K,1&, *}-' (>OFA,4&-= ):, 665
*}-' (& 9#&#+*? P?""*9` -81Jc%4-*',
B+5O )8*,#K3# 54W 54-OP1c,4-*
*I3' (& )4-84' %R& J;*&E' 545*?J+t
*i%4+ &1& 4I- &V& )484,-4-#K& )0"4'.
3{-' & #eO )4&3+5:' p#?3c&?%*' 670
B+5O, P?&*V,4 >:-W )4&-$"%L >80&4'.

If virgin Dike, the child of Zeus is with him in his deeds and thoughts, then soon
will this be so. But since Dike has not looked upon him or granted him honor, not
when he escaped his mothers dark womb, nor in his childhood, nor as he came
into his youth, nor when hairs began to cluster on his chin, I do not believe that
she will stand beside him now as he bears evils into his fatherland. For then
would Dike truly be a fraud in name, if she attended to this man in his brazen
plans.

Eteocles calls the encoded language of the blazon into question, rejecting the shields
identification of Dike who declares her own name in a separate identifying inscription
on the shield that often goes unnoticed (B+5O 3' [8' #i&4+ >O,1& 646). Eteocles insists
that the goddess cannot take up Polyneices cause, indeed, that she has never supported
him at any time. He, not his brother, should be the figure on the shield, for he asks
what man is more just than I? (-+' [""*' %<""*& (&315c-#8*'; 673).
Eteocles sees himself in the shield device but is unwilling to hold the tool in common
with his brother. He is not satisfied with taking up his part as reperformer of the device,
he wants to make himself its encoder as well. This is the signal expression of Eteocles
inability to share his identity with his true, living double. The polar opposition of the
nearly indistinguishable brothers is the touchstone of Eteocles self-perception. He cannot
share his brothers voice lest his own be lost. He thus seeks to usurp his brothers role and
to erase him from the shield just as he has deposed him and expelled him from their
common fatherland.
But for all of Eteocles insistence, the true script cannot be circumvented. The futility
of his refusal to reperform his Polyneices shield is confirmed in their ultimate encounter,
which will see both brothers take common possession of the land in death (as set out by
180
their fathers curse in 726-33). And as Eteocles arms himself for battle, taking up the
literal tools of war that have been the engine of the meta-theatrical drama up to this
point,
88
he demonstrates how he is already embedded in the role set out for him by the
kosmos of the scene, already reperforming the poets drama. This moment of broader
self-reflection is underlined by the Chorus, who mark Eteocles exit not by turning their
attention to the battle that is taking place offstage, but by remembering the events of the
trilogys previous plays. Eteocles unsuccessful attempt to deny the absent presence of
the author and to repudiate the mediating properties of the scriptory tool cannot simply be
counteracted by the characters death. The tragic poet must demonstrate his ultimate
mastery over the dramatic structure of the trilogy as a whole. His voice does not rely on
one reperformer for its fidelity. The polyphony of all the voices on the stage and of all
the performative iterations of his poem ensures that the poets tool will be put to its
intended purpose.


88
The suggestion that the arming was a component of the dramatic staging is made by
Schadewaldt (1961) and taken up by Bacon (1964) pp. 34-6.
181
CHAPTER 4 SNAKES: CHOEPHOROI, OLYMPIAN 8

In the last chapter we examined how Pindar and Aeschylus explore the materiality of
scriptory communication through their manipulation of the notion of the tool. We saw
how both poets portray instruments, such as the shields of the Seven Against Thebes or
the bridle of Olympian 13, as a special kind of physical object that is able to mediate the
time and space separating coder and receiver. In particular, the externalized status of
these inanimate objects enables them to function as intermediaries; wholly synonymous
with neither encoder nor receiver, these objects represent a shared possession that can
connect across an otherwise insuperable distance. And yet, the inanimate material cannot
convey the message inscribed in the intermediary instrument without the aid of an
embodied performer who brings the words to life. As scripts, these objects must be
reperformed so that the living voice of their initial encoding can again be heard. The
conceptual framework of this further element, which requires the physical embodiment of
the scriptory poem by the reperformer, will take up our attention now.
For the poets of the early fifth century, imagining the future reperformance of their
scriptory poems was not simply a question of verbal impersonation but of incarnation. To
bring a script back to life it was not enough for the reperformer simply to speak the words
of the poet; he had to enter into a fully embodied mimesis of the role(s) set out for him in
the text. The aspect of embodied reperformance that is at issue here has little connection
with the material nature of the script itself, since it is not the reified script that the
reperformer must inhabit but the voices contained silently therein. For Pindar and
Aeschylus, the physically transformative power of scriptory poetics was as indispensable
and compelling an element of their new poetic landscape as verbal mimesis. While
steeped in the obscure and at times mystical forces of religious ritual, the ability of poetic
reperformance to bring about a physical transformation was not a feat of magic but the
product of the fully conscious embrace of structures of scriptedness. The scriptory poetics
of our poets was a question of the human body as much as of its ephemeral voice: a
visceral matter of animal flesh.
Within the poetry of Pindar and Aeschylus, it is the image of the snake that
constitutes the most potent representation of the physical embodiment on which scriptory
182
reperformance relies. With its deep connections to the prophetic powers of Pythian
Apollo, to birth and physical transformation, and to the chthonic sphere and the
underworld, the figure of the snake resonated in the Greek poetic imagination from its
earliest stages.
1
Snakes play a key, if infrequent, role in the bestiaries of Homers
extended similes and form an even more central component of his presentation of divine
portents. The snake is at once a metaphoric representative of human behavior and an
allegorical symbol through which the gods communicate the future to mortals. It thus
displays a close poetic kinship with another prophetically important animal: the bird,
whose connections to fifth-century ideas about reperformance were explored in part one
of this study.
2
But whereas the bird, with its ready connections to sound and poetic
articulation, came primarily to help explore the sonic range of poetic reperformance, the
poets of the early fifth century deployed the figure of the snake to represent the more
physical aspects of their scriptory songs.
The powerful corporality of the snake comes across most readily in those moments
when the animals literal physical presence permits an interaction with men. Thus in
Pindars Pythian 4, the giant snake represents the last impossible physical challenge that
Jason must overcome with the aid of Medeas magic before securing the golden fleece.
The snake is described with reference to its appearance (9"4?5D)4 [] )*151"$&:-*&
>1& 249) and especially its incredible size: k' )=J#1 %=5#1 -# )#&-O5$&-#8*& &4V&
58=-#1, / -0"#,#& & )"494W ,13=8*?. (245) The comparison with an inanimate object
of human craftsmanship highlights the terror that a animal might be so large. A ship of
the same size would not be frightening because its inanimate nature renders it incapable
of action without human rowers to lend it their power and a steersman to give it a course.
More than its size, it is the idea that something of such great mass could yet, within its
animate flesh, be possessed of a living spirit that renders the giant serpent so fearsome.
Similarly Philoctetes, in a fragment of Aeschylus play of that name, recounts how his
defeat by a snake irreparably deformed his body: *I 978 ~ 38=5:& @&{5#&, @""'
(&c151,#& / 3#1&R& ,-*%=-:& Q%>?,1& )*3E' F"4F#K&. (fr. 252 Radt) The point of
physical contact creates a bridge between the two and permits the snake to transform the

1
Padel (1992) pp. 144-7.
2
See above, pp. 107-14.
183
heros body.
3
Less sinister are the two serpents sent by Apollo who feed honey to the
newborn Iamos in the myth of Olympian 6. Their eyes shimmering silver (9"4?5D)#')
a mark of their animate but also changeable and divinely inspired physicality they
protect the fragile young babe by bringing him the nourishment that he would otherwise
have from his mothers breast.
4

Within the metaphoric sphere, snakes are no less physically potent and maintain both
their fearsomeness and their special ability to come into contact with and even enter the
human body. As we saw in the previous chapter, it was the serpentine Typhon on the
blazon of Hippomedon who brought the metal of the inanimate shield closest to a living
thing.
5
In Aeschylus Suppliants, the Danaids pray to prevent their capture by escaping
their physical bodies: -E )<& 3' [>4&-*' @%)#-R' @13&E' M' / 5$&1' [-#8;#
)-#869:& /"*+%4&. (782-3). When the women fail to attain their goal, they see their
aggressor, the Egyptian herald, as a snake coming towards them on two legs (895-6):
%41% )0"4' 3+)*?' >1' / QJ13&4 3' Z' %# []. The image hovers between beast and
man, a composite of the two that is nevertheless unmistakable in its presence before them
()0"4').
6
In the Persai, Ares is capable of reaching men on the battlefield with the
murderous, snake-like power of his gaze: 5?=&#*& 3' %%4,1 "#6,,:& / >*&+*?
3089%4 38=5*&-*' (81-2). The eyes of the snake, denoted by the descriptive epithet that
they share with the goddess Athena, are a locus of exceptional power as capable of
transmitting deathly poison as their teeth or tongue.
7
Pursuing the violent metaphor in the
opposite direction, Pindar casts the death of Neoptolemus in his sixth Paian as a
reperformance of Apollos slaughter of the serpent Pytho at Delphi. The killing, which
takes place on the very omphalos where Apollos victory over the great snake brought
both god and place their name and oracular fame, draws on the resonances of Apollos

3
Something similar may also have occurred in the now lost Kressai, which later sources suggest
relied on magic learnt from snakes to bring Glaucus back from the dead. Cf. Apollodorus 3.3.1-2
and Hygenus Fabulae 136. Sommerstein (2008) pp. 122-3.
4
The important role of the eyes in establishing the snakes protean nature is reflected in the
etymological connection between the 38=5:& and the verb 3085*%41 (aorist participle,
3845c&), on which see Garvie (1986) p. 77.
5
Above, p. 172.
6
And before the audience, as the herald of their description is onstage beside them.
7
Padel (1992) p. 123.
184
great triumph to imbue the latter event with a broader significance with respect to the
gods power.
8

This is not to say Pindar and Aeschylus never bring snakes to bear on the aural
sphere. In the shield ekphrases of the Seven Against Thebes, snakes play a direct role in
depicting the sonic register when Tydeus is said to shriek in battle like a snake
(5"4994K,1& M' 38=5:& F* 381). But this description of the sounds made by the
living man emphasizes that the noise derives from an animate agent, rather than his
inanimate shield, which emits the same sound, but without the corresponding figurative
comparison (H)' @,)+3*' 3C - / J4"5A"4-*1 5"=y*?,1 385-6).
9
Tydeus similarity to
the snake is primarily based on their shared corporeal status and it is this quality of the
two agents that produces the equivalence between their cries. Pindar too presents snakes
as bearers of sound, as in the opening of the fragmentary second Dithyramb, where he
describes the noise made by Athena when she shakes her aegis: s4""=3*['] 4n9+'
%?8+:& >;*99=y#-41 5"4994K' 3845$&-:& (Dithyramb 2. 17-8 = fr. 70bSM). Here
too, however, the sonic description of the snakes is made to bear on the physicality of its
source. The living snakes of Athenas distinctive armor are mentioned within the context
of a dithyrambic performance. The passage begins with a discussion of the noise made
when choruses of the past performed songs full of sigmas (-E ,7& 5+F3O"*&
@&;8c)*1,1& @)E ,-*%=-:&, [Dithyramb 2.2 = fr. 70bSM]) and the subsequent
description of the sounds of the snakes seems to be inspired by this initial focus on poetic
performance.
10
The false (5+F3O"*&) sigma of the human performers stands in contrast to
the true sibilants of the snakes, whose bodies match the sound.
11
The implication is that
Pindars reperformers, who revel in sibilants,
12
know how to make their own bodies
serpentine as the singers of the past did not.
13

But perhaps most essential for Pindar and Aeschylus is the way that the snakes
physicality is invested with the power of prophetic expression, creating a link between

8
Rutherford (1991) pp. 7-8, Rutherford (2001) pp. 31820.
9
The resonances of the verb 5"=y: and its cognates are discussed above, pp. 107-114.
10
Porter (2007) p. 2.
11
D'Angour (1997) p. 342.
12
D'Angour (1997) p. 338.
13
Whether the claim relates to the circular dance of the kuklios choros, as DAngour suggests, is
not readily discernable from the extant fragments. D'Angour (1997) p. 342.
185
the spatio-temporal dynamics of the verbal script and the corporeal concerns of embodied
mimesis. This connection is well illustrated by the portentous snakes sent by a wrathful
Hera to punish the newborn Herakles in Pindars first Nemean.
14
The two snakes easily
make their way into the recesses of the house, displaying the uncannily physical
malleability that permits them to enjoy a proximity to humans that is denied to most
creatures. As they prepare to ensnare Herakles and his brother in their jaws, the young
hero takes note of their presence and kills them. The death is recounted in vivid detail:
Herakles wraps his hands around the serpents throats and throttles them, slowly
squeezing the life from their monstrous bodies (@9J*%0&*1' 3C J8$&*' / p?J7'
@)0)&#?,#& %#"0:& @>=-:& 46-7). The encounter transpires in silence, the unsung
chords (%#"0:& @>=-:&) of the serpents deaths experienced entirely through bodily
contact as the erstwhile victim vanquishes his would-be killers. The physical power of the
scene is palpable, as the most savage and bestial of heroes tastes battle for the first time
()#18<-* 3C )8D-*& %=J4' 43).
15

Catching sight of the event, the midwives let out a horrified cry that pierces the
hermetic closure of the scene. Soon the seer Tiresias is called to the house to interpret the
event. What follows is an extended prophecy delivered in oratio obliqua in which the
orthomantis outlines the entire future course of Herakles life (61-72):
16

~ 30 * >8=y# 54W )4&-W ,-84-, )*+41' ~%1"A,#1 -6J41',
N,,*?' %C& (& J08,L 5-4&c&,
N,,*?' 3C )$&-L ;{84' @q38*3+54'
54+ -1&4 ,d& )"49+L
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>< j 3tc,#1& %$8*&.
54W 978 N-4& ;#*W (& )#3+L "0984' 19=&-#,,1& %=J4&
@&-1=y:,1&, F#"0:& H)E 1)4K,1 5#+&*? >413+%4& 94+t )#>68,#,;41 5$%4&

14
This theme was also the subject of Paian 20 (=fr. 52uSM), which seems to deal with the death
scene in a similar way.
.[........].[.] 3[1]7 ;?8<& ()#13[
>1#' ;#$)*%)[*1 ]
...y..()W F80>*' *I84&+*? B1$'
.....].[.]&;', ~ 3' @&-+*& @&7 5=84 -' [#18[#
.....] J#18W %#"0:& [)* )*15+"*&
,)=]894&*& Q881p#& j=& -' Q>4&#& >?=&
..../%%]=-:& [)* ,0"4' (3+&4,#&.
15
On Herakles animal nature, see Burkert (1979) Ch. 4.
16
Rose (1974) p. 158.
186
Q&#)#& 4I-E& %7& (& #n8A&t -E& z)4&-4 J8$&*& (& ,J#8
Y,?J+4& 54%=-:& %#9=":& )*1&7& "4J$&-' (P4+8#-*& 70
/"F+*1' (& 3c%4,1, 3#P=%#&*& ;4"#87& F4& [5*1-1& 54W 9=%*&
34+,4&-4 )78 BW !8*&+3t, ,#%&E& 4n&A,#1& &$%*&.
And he explained to him and to the entire crowd what fortunes he would meet,
what beasts he would slay on land, and what lawless creatures in the sea. And
which man, approaching with twisted overabundance, he told that he would repay
with the most hateful of fates. And [he said] that when the gods stood against the
Giants in battle in the plain of Phlegra, by flights of his missiles would their
shining hair be sullied with earth. But he himself in uninterrupted peace for all
time would have a most desirable portion of rest as payment for his great toil, in
the most pleasing home, receiving blooming Youth as his lawful wife and feasting
by the side of Zeus and praising his holy law.

The seer is able to foretell all of Herakles future struggles, the beasts that he will
encounter on land and sea, the suffering and toils that he will undergo at the hands of
Eurystheus, his battles alongside the Olympian gods and triumph over the Giants, and his
ultimate immortalization and marriage to Hebe. The future depicted is as emphatically
physical as the portent itself. The strains and toils of the conflicts to come replicate the
feat first achieved in Heracles victory over the snakes. His future physical prowess is
present from the outset, as are the monstrous and terrible foes against whom he will
battle. Tiresias is able to glimpse each subsequent confrontation in the newborn heros
single encounter with the snakes. The snakes contain all of these moments throughout
Herakles mortal life within their own bodies. Their appearance at his birth functions as a
corporeal palimpsest in which each future event is already present. It is the special
characteristic of the serpent to embody these many individuals across time and space in
its own living flesh.
Tiresias prophecy adapts the portentous event as a verbal narrative, a catalogue of
Herakles adventures that looks back to the long poetic tradition associated with the great
hero. Pindar himself alludes to this history in his introduction to the myth, when he
claims to meet with Herakles through the medium of ancient tales (33-4):
(9v 3' 845"0*' @&-0J*%41 )8*>8$&:'
(& 5*8?>4K' @8#-<& %#9="41', @8J4K*& /-86&:& "$9*&,

And I readily meet with Herakles in the great peaks of virtue, rousing the ancient
tale

187
Through his appropriation of Tiresias prophetic narrative, Pindar recounts these
previously sung exploits in his own poem, but it is the snakes in their insistent
corporeal presence who bring the deeds of the poetic tradition to light and allow Pindar
himself to come into contact with the hero (@&-0J*%41). The snakes serve as a corporeal
pivot, a point of embodied union where the full life and exploits of the hero are
commingled in a single living body. The spectrum that is rendered incarnate by the
snakes is palpably present to the seer, who presents a catalogue of all the creatures of the
future that he perceives within the snakes ()*+41'N,,*?' N,,*?'), and it is also
open to the poet, who can meet with the man of the past through the portentous animals
who bring his life into a single moment of embodied presence.

1. !B!mSru B'
Within the extant Aeschylean corpus, there is no better illustration of the snakes ability
to pinpoint the uneasy balance between the animate and inanimate mediation of scriptory
poetics than the Choephoroi. The snake at the breast, the horrifying vision of
Clytemnestras portentous dream, is the organizing image of the play.
17
The figure of the
serpent merges beast and babe, milk and blood,
18
entwining killer and victim in an
embrace of intimate cruelty. Announced by an authorless cry of fear, the toros
oneiromantis in the enigmatic words of the Chorus (33-4),
19
the snake dream offers
multiple interpretive possibilities and opens a conceptual field of vast range and
potency.
20
As Goldhill observes, the dream becomes a symbol, explicitly tied to the act
of interpretation and re-definition through the characters various attempts to
understand its meaning.
21
But beyond mere interpretation, the multivalent figure of the

17
Whallon (1958), Fowler (1967) pp. 23-74, Petrounias (1976) pp. 129-9. As Rousseau notes, the
dream is linked to the imagery of the preceding play, but unlike in the Agamemnon,
Clytemnestras dream manifests itself in a new way: in action. Rousseau (1963) p. 122.
18
On the filial theme, see especially Dupont (2001) pp. 74-90.
19
On the difficulty of these lines, see Garvie (1986) ad loc. Goldhill too notes the resonant
absence of a clear subject. Goldhill (1984) p. 107.
20
Whallon (1958), O'Neill (1998) pp. 272-3.
21
Goldhill (1984) esp. p. 155. The dream is subjected to explicit interpretation on three distinct
occasions. The first, reported by the Chorus, is the initial response of Klytemnestra, who follows
the 581-4+ /&#18=-:& in dispatching Electra and the Chorus to make libations at the tomb of
Agamemnon (32-54). The second occurs at the conclusion of the kommos, when Orestes learns of
the dream and offers his own conflicting explanation (523-53). The final interpretation is that of
188
suckling snake adds a further dimension to the symbolic matrix of the play by permitting
the characters themselves to deliberately inhabit the scriptory song of which they are a
part. Through their interaction with the figurative power of the snake by turns
metaphoric, allegorical, and literal the speaking actors, and none more so than Orestes,
reflect on their own role in giving life and voice to the same symbols that are embodied
by the serpent in the dream-text.
The most significant event prefigured by the dream vision is Orestes matricidal
encounter with Klytemnestra which will take place at the culmination of the drama. Yet,
by confining the murder to the final quarter of the play, Aeschylus places the central
focus of the staged action on the preliminaries to the deed itself. This is not a question of
planning: the dolos is quickly devised, a haplous muthos as Orestes himself declares
(554).
22
Rather the action of the play is concerned with establishing the conceptual
parameters which will permit Orestes to go through with the matricide. Orestes
preparation is accomplished progressively through a series of moments acted out onstage:
the return of the exile; the incantation of the kommos; the revelation of the dream; and
finally, at the critical moment, the communication (and re-performance) of Apollos
prophecy. Each event represents a further step in Orestes transformation into the agent
who can commit the unthinkable deed of killing his own mother. In the process, Orestes
will also be literally transformed, disguised as a foreigner to report the false tale of his
own death.
Well before the details of Klytemnestras serpent dream have been revealed by the
Chorus, the recognition scene between Orestes and Electra establishes the critical
foundation upon which the symbolism of the snake will rest.
23
The scene presents a
meditation on the limits of objecthood, extending even to those special objects, agalmata,
that have been imbued with the transcendent power of the divine. The signs of Orestes
presence that Electra finds by her fathers tomb are turned into representatives of the
script at its most basic level. The simple message of these objects Orestes was here

Klytemnestra as she recognizes that the dream has in fact prophesied her death at the hands of her
son (908).
22
Orestes claim is interpreted differently by Goldhill (1984) pp. 154-5.
23
The serpent dream was, however, already a part of the tradition through Stesichorus, so some
inkling of the content of the dream may have been possible from its first mention at line 32. See
discussion below, p. 200.
189
expresses the fundamental characteristic of scriptory communication: the absent author.
Yet it is equally fundamental that the scriptory communication counterbalance the
absence of its encoder with the living breath of reperformance. The script cannot function
alone. The opening exchange reveals the necessity of a further element, the animate
embodiment of the encoded object. As the play progresses, and Orestes mastery of
encoding and re-enactment develops, it will be the role of the snake to allow the young
exile to step into his new role as both avenger and matricide, to contain within his own
body the contradictions of the action that he must perform. But Orestes cannot gain this
understanding on his own. He must first explore the power, and the dangers, of a world of
scripts through his reunion with his sister each playing the part of encoder and
reperformer of the other before he is able to embrace both roles himself.
The play begins with the arrival of Orestes, whose return as timaoros has been amply
foreshadowed in the Agamemnon.
24
The text of this opening scene is notoriously
lacunose, even by the standards of the Choephorois universally problematic text. We are
fortunate to have a handful of lines preserved for us through the writings of and about
other authors, but the true extent of what has been lost remains unknown and
unknowable.
25
Nevertheless, the nine lines that are reproduced in most modern editions,
whatever the extent of the gaps between them or, indeed, their original order,
26
clearly
represent Orestes offering a prayer to Hermes Chthonios and dedicating a lock of hair to
the grave of his father the same lock which Electra will discover when she later
approaches the tomb in her own lamentation (6-7):
)"$54%*& &=JL ;8#)-A81*&.
-E& 3#6-#8*& 3C -$&3# )#&;O-A81*&

lock of hair, an offering to Inachos, and this second, a dedication of grief.

With the dedication of the lock, Orestes supplements his words with a physical token, a
synechdochic surrogate cut from his own head. The lock is imbued with the import of
Orestes prayer and is meant to retain the meaning of his words after the occasion of

24
Roberts (1985).
25
Garvie (1986) ad 1-21.
26
Possible variations are presented and evaluated by West (1990) pp. 229-33.
190
speech has passed.
27
Unlike the shields of the Seven Against Thebes, whose encoded
import was significant precisely due to the total absence of the shields authors from
the dramatic stage,
28
the dramatic action of the Choephoroi opens with a scene of
encoding in which we are permitted to view the moment of composition, to witness the
true intention of the author as he imbues an object with the meaning of his words. Yet,
just as with Athenas gift to Bellerophon in Pindars Olympian 13, far from rendering his
script unproblematic, the subsequent disjunction of coder and encoded text will produce
an interpretive opacity that threatens to obscure them both.
The lock, as a physical part of the speakers body, is an integral and natural extension
of Orestes words and is thus addressed, as they are, to his dead father. The words and the
offering represent the first articulation of the plays overarching theme of communication
between the dead and living (4-5):
29

-6%F*? 3' ()' J;L -3# 5O86,,: )4-8W
5"6#1&, @5*V,41.

I speak out beside this mounded tomb for my father to hear and listen.

The prayer, and thus the lock which represents it, is directed explicitly to Agamemnon,
whom Orestes hopes to reach in the underworld through the mediating locus of his tomb.
After the dedication he addresses his father in the second person (*I 978 )48v& %:P4
,$&, )=-#8, %$8*& / *I3' (P0-#1&4 J#K8' ()' (5>*8 &#58*V. For I was not present
then to lament your fate, father, nor did I stretch out my hand to the procession of your
corpse. 8-9). Orestes laments his previous absence and thus expresses his hope that his
belated return will allow him to communicate with the world below. Yet, in order to
encode the lock with his message, Orestes must sever the hair from the rest of the body. It
cannot be dedicated without becoming divorced from its point of origin, removing its

27
On the religious significance that the dedication instills into the subsequent recognition, see
especially Pucci (1967).
28
A similar contrast might also be drawn with Klytemnestras beacon speech in the Agamemnon
(281-316), where the distant fires bring the message of Troys downfall back to Argos. Cf.
Goldhill (1984) p. 126. In that scenario, however, Klytemnestra is fully master of the symbols
(-*1*+3# -*+ %*1 "4%)43O>$8:& &*%*+ 312) and is able to reperform their silent message
onstage, giving full and faithful body and voice to the fiery lights (-05%48 -*1*V-*& ,6%F*"$&
-# ,*W "09: 315).
29
So Pucci (1967) p. 368. This theme will be explored in greater detail in next chapter.
191
author from control over its subsequent fortunes. The silent lock will still be able
communicate, but it will be to a different, unintended addressee, and it will do so through
visual, not verbal, means.
30
Orestes is not aware of this potential when he places the lock
on the tomb, but through his observation of his sisters response to it he will come to
understand the basic mechanics of scriptory poetics.
The arrival of Electra and the Chorus of captive women interrupts Orestes prayer to
his father. Orestes quickly identifies his sister, and in his curiosity about the womens
procession he curtails his own funerary dedications and chooses to observe the women
undetected and learn the purpose of their visit to the tomb.
31
Orestes returns to a position
ekpodn, out of the action though not off stage allowing the events surrounding his
fathers tomb once again to take place without him. His companion in this self-effacing
(albeit temporary) step away from the central action of the stage, Pylades, is addressed by
name, signaling the silent presence of the third actor, whose own status as non-
participatory observer of the drama will finally be brought to bear at the plays crucial
moment, when he steps into a speaking role in response to Orestes desperation.
32
At the
end of this brief prologue, however, it is Orestes who joins Pylades as unheard and
unseen witness to the speech of Electra and the Chorus. Orestes withdrawal recreates the
earlier condition of his absence from the tomb and from the house, but now his absence is
firmly situated within the hic et nunc action of the present, and with his encoded
dedication left behind to mark his return.
Electra first takes notice of the lock at the close of the libation rituals
33
and draws the
Choruss attention to the &0*' %6;*' (166),
34
a designation which at first seems to align

30
On the central theme of sight and speech as complementary modes of communication in the
Choephoroi, see Goldhill (1984) pp. 105-37, Yziquel (1997).
31
Orestes quick recognition of Electra presents a clear contrast to her own extended doubts about
her brothers identity. It is noteworthy that in his Sophoclean and Euripidean guises, Orestes is
not permitted to act as voyeur. Sophocles makes explicit the denial (80-5): m. \8' (,-W& Y
36,-O&*' "05-84; ;0"#1' / %#+&:%#& 4I-*V 5@&45*6,:%#& 9$:&; / s. 51,-4 %O3C&
)8$,;#& a -7 *P+*? / )#18c%#;' Q83#1&, 5@)E -D&3' @8JO9#-#K& / )4-8E' J0*&-#' "*?-8=
-4V-4 978 >08#1 / &+5O& -' (>' Y%K& 54W 58=-*' -D& 38:%0&:&.
32
Knox (1972) p. 108-9, discussed above, pp. 126-7.
33
As many have noted, the discovery seems to come in response to the Chorus prayer for an
[&O8 @&4"?-R8 3$%:& (160-1). Solmsen (1967) p. 4, Fitton Brown (1961).
34
The phrase &0*' %6;*' is likely also directed at establishing the novelty of Aeschylus
treatment of the recognition scene through the dedication of a lock of hair in comparison with
192
the object with her father, the locks original addressee. But Electra cannot perceive the
locks intended purpose. The initial introduction of the lock as a mythos suggests that it
belongs to the verbal realm, but Electra describes her subsequent examination of the
object in exclusively visual terms: ~8D (168); 3*P=,41 (170); n3#K& (174); n3#K& (176);
)8*,#+3#-41 (178). Looking at the lock, Electra senses that it must have an origin, an
author, but its mute visual cues cannot reveal its past to her. In her quest for its owner,
she searches for a body to which the lock might be rejoined, and paradoxically identifies
herself as the only possible donor: *I5 Q,-1& N,-1' )"R& (%*V 5#+841-$ &1&. No one
apart from myself could have cut it (172); 4I-*K,1& Y%K& 5=8-4 )8*,>#8R' n3#K&. And
to my own [hair] how closely you can compare its looks. (176). Still relying wholly on
literal, visual indicators, Electra cannot grasp the true nature of the object before her. In
the face of the authors complete absence, Electra usurps his role, claiming his agency as
her own, much as singers in the oral tradition appropriated each others verses and names.
She does not know how a scriptory poem should be reperformed. And in her confusion
she up-ends the process, offering herself, the receiver of the encoded message, as the
agent of its creation, unable to see the author behind her re-performative role.
When the Chorus suggest that Orestes may be the source of the lock, Electra at first
makes use of the same clues of visual resemblance to test this proposition: %="1,-'
(5#+&*? F*,-86J*1' )8*,#+3#-41. It most resembles the hair of that man (178).
35
But
where she could complete the visual comparison of the lock to her own body and, more
importantly, gauge its presence against her own past actions, Electas identification of the
lock as belonging to her brother does not bring the absent Orestes fully into her presence.
For Electra, this erstwhile part of her brothers body, now isolated and distinct from its
source, is no longer endowed with a vital connection to its origin. She accepts that the

Stesichorus, who also employed the lock motif in his narration of Orestes vengeance (P.Oxy.
2506 fr 26ii). The prominent influence of Stesichorus two-book lyric Oresteia on Aeschylus
trilogy seems clear, though the precise nature of the relationship is impossible to determine
without a better understanding of the earlier poets work than is now possible from our few extant
fragments.
35
The verisimilitude of the Choephoroi recognition scene has been the subject of criticism since
as least as early as Euripides Electra. There is, logically, no way for Electra to know what her
brothers hair looks like after his many years of absence, but in this, as in many other aspects, we
must accept that the logic of Aeschylus symbolism is more powerful than the mundane
requirements of daily life. Cf. Mejer (1979).
193
lock belongs to him, but she cannot credit that he has himself dedicated it at the tomb.
The lock is an offering, nothing more. It is likely, Electra asserts, that Orestes has sent the
offering in the care of a courier rather than coming himself to their fathers grave (180).
His hair, and not he, is present, and she will only extend her belief to the former.
Electras doubt is tempered by the hope that Orestes may indeed have returned. She
struggles to understand whether it is possible that he has come in person, and as she does
so, her conceptual grasp of the lock undergoes a transformation; where once she saw an
object, now she begins to recognize a script. This change in the status that Electra accords
the lock is signaled by a corresponding expansion of the vocabulary that she uses to
describe it. At first, Electra and the Chorus refer to the object almost exclusively as part
of a human body; F$,-8?J*' (168),
36
(;#+841 (175), F*,-86J*1 (178), J4+-O (180), and
once by the broad moniker 3D8*& (177). These terms stress the corporeal nature of the
lock and, by implication, its natural connection to a living donor with whose physical
body the dedication might at least be re-united, if not rejoined. As she begins her
extended speech of reconsideration (183-204), Electra reprises her earlier position,
shedding tears as she looks upon the lock ()"$54%*& n3*6,O1 -$&3# 187). The physical
description paired with a term of visual perception reaffirms her literal understanding of
the object. But as her hopes increase, Electra wonders if she might apply a different label,
that of aglaisma (192-4):
(9v 3' N):' %C& [&-158?' -=3' 4n&0,:,
#i&41 -$3' @9"=1,%= %*1 -*V >1"-=-*?
F8*-D& T80,-*? ,4+&*%41 3' H)' (")+3*'.

For how can I openly declare that this is the adornment of that dearest to me of
mortals, Orestes hope fawns on me.

The contrast between the two semantic fields is repeated in even stronger terms in the
following lines (195-200):
#e;' #iJ# >:&R& Q%>8*&' @990"*? 3+5O&,
N):' 3+>8*&-1' *],4 %R '51&?,,$%O&,
@""' a ,=>' &#1 -$&3' @)*)-6,41 )"$5*&,
#e)#8 9' @)' (J;8*V 584-E' & -#-%O%0&*',
a P?99#&R' & #iJ# ,?%)#&;#K& (%*+,

36
It is only much later that this term comes to have the generalized meaning of ornament.
194
[94"%4 -6%F*? -*V3# 54W -1%R& )4-8$'.

If only it had a rational voice like a messenger, so that I might not waver between
two thoughts, but either it would clearly instruct me to reject this lock if it was
cut from the head of an enemy or being a kin to me it could join in my lament,
an ornament for this tomb and an honor to my father.

Electra is of two minds (3+>8*&-1'). When she believes the lock to come from her
enemies, she sees it only as a body-part ()"$54%*& 187; )"$5*& 198). But when she
allows herself to imagine that her brother is its origin, it takes on the character of a
symbolic object (@9"=1,%4 188; [94"%4 201). As we saw in the last chapter, the terms
agalma and aglaisma participate in a special discourse that attaches to certain objects
thought to be possessed of a divine power closely associated with exceptional linguistic,
and especially written, communication. Within the Oresteia these terms have an even
more pointed resonance, having been conspicuously applied to the human sacrifices of
Iphigenia and Cassandra and Agamemnon in the Agamemnon.
37
In the earlier instances
the terms signal the uneasy mingling of animate and inanimate nature that results from
the transformation of a living, human body into a sacrificial object.
38
Here Electra
deploys the terms to reflect a similar transmutation, that of (part of) her brothers body as
it is transformed into the dedicatory object on her fathers tomb.
Electras shift in terminology is reflected in the modes of perception that she
associates with the lock. Despite her newly expanded understanding of its symbolic
potential, the object will remain opaque until Electra knows its origin and intention. To
learn these things, she must hear and not see. She hopes that the lock itself will speak
for its author and serve as a messenger (@990"*? 3+5O&) for what is unseen. This is not
merely a question of communication, but of the mediated, encoded, and segregated
communication of scriptory poetics. As Electra comes to understand the lock as more
than simply a body-part, she becomes more acutely aware of the distance that separates
the script from its author. And it is in her realization of this basic quality of separation
that Electra begins to yearn for more than a purely visual engagement with the object
before her; she wants to hear its voice (#e;' #iJ# >:&R&). The voice that Electra longs for

37
@9"=q,%4, (of the smell of human sacrifices) Ag. 1312; [94"%4, (of Iphigenia and Helen,
respectively) !g. 208; 741.
38
Scodel (1996), Wohl (1998) pp. 67-117.
195
is not that of Orestes, but of the lock, of the scriptory object itself. But the lock, like the
tools and armor examined in the previous chapter, has no agency of its own. In order to
speak, not only must it be imbued with the message of its encoder, but it must be
reanimated in embodied reperformance. Electra cannot believe in the message or
recognize its author without hearing its voice reperformed for her in the hic et nunc.
Without the living medium of an actor to impersonate and embody its author, the lock
will remain mute and meaningless.
Electra is not immediately granted the proof of voice that she craves. Rather she is
presented with another inanimate encoding of her brothers body: the footprints he has
left on the earth around the tomb (206-12):
54W %R& ,-+F*1 9#, 3#6-#8*& -#5%A81*&,
)*3D& N%*1*1 -*K' -' (%*K,1& (%>#8#K'.
54W 978 36' (,-E& -c3# )#81984>7 )*3*K&,
4I-*V -' (5#+&*? 54W ,?&#%)$8*? -1&$'.
)-08&41 -#&$&-:& ;' H)*984>4W %#-8*6%#&41 210
#n' -4I-E ,?%F4+&*?,1 -*K' (%*K' ,-+F*1'.
)=8#,-1 3' 3W' 54W >8#&D& 54-4>;*8=.

And look footprints! A second token, answering exactly to those of my feet. But
there are traces of two feet, of that man and some companion. The undersides of
the sinews and outlines measure equally to my own footprints. I am awash in pain
and confusion.

The prints are a second, unintended, encoding by the author of the lock; marks left in the
ground as a result of his presence at the tomb. The 3#6-#8*& -#5%A81*& offers Electra an
opportunity to reperform her interpretation just as Orestes reperformed his dedication at
the opening of the play (3#6-#8*' )#&;O-A81*' 7). Now less resistant to the symbolic
power of the lock, Electra quickly aligns the footprints with the modalities of written
textuality, declaring the prints to be inscriptions: )#81984>= )*3*K& (207) and )-08&41
-#&$&-:& ;' H)*984>4+ (209).
39
Like the lock, the footprints are markers of Orestes
own body, formed from his feet and sinews. But the prints are not objects as is the lock

39
Steiner (1994) p. 35. Somewhat more subtly, the prints are twice referred to by the unusual
term, ,-+F*1 (205, 210), the same one that Apollo uses to unmask Hermes deceitful double
footprints in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (352, 353), a text that is considered by a number of
contemporary scholars to be a meditation on writing. Bergren (1982) and less explicitly, Steiner
(1994) pp. 42-4. Cf. also Ag. 411.
196
but mere vestiges: shadow images of Orestes positive form.
40
These negative traces are
not simply further removed from their author; they were never truly part of him, and their
very existence is predicated on his absence. And yet, the inscriptions on the earth are
more faithful bearers of their authors intent, since they reflect not only his desire to
honor his fathers grave but his former physical presence and agency in the dedicatory
ritual.
41

When Electra compares her brothers prints to her own, she does not this time
confuse herself about their source but easily recognizes Orestes as their true creator. And
yet the identical nature of their footprints the ease with which she might step into them
does not bring her any closer to their absent author. Her recognition of his agency in the
prints only heightens the distance between them. Electra does not take up the role of re-
performer; she does not inhabit Orestes absent body filling the space marked out by his
empty footprints.
42
Although she can sense the agent behind the prints, she does not know
how to put herself in contact with him by allowing him to become present through her;
sharing her body and voice to bring him into the hic et nunc. She only feels her brothers
absence more keenly. Rather than a joyful reunion, this is at once the moment of
Electras greatest distance from, and deepest longing for, the author of these texts. In her
pure isolation, her only company is her own anguish ()=8#,-1 3' 3W' 54W >8#&D&
54-4>;*8= 211). The pathos of Electras confused longing reminds us of the profound
uncertainty that motivates the poet to regularly explore the scriptory nature of his work.
Electras despair is not only put on view for the audience, but also for her brother as
internal audience on the stage. As Rush Rehm has argued, Orestes silent observation of
the Choruss first song turns the site of the tomb into a kind of onstage theater, a self-
referential, or metatheatrical, space.
43
When Orestes and Pylades move off to the side,
watching the women dance around the tomb, they present an onstage performance of the

40
Cf. Agamemnon 414ff. ()$;:1 3. H)#8)*&-+4' / >=,%4 3$P#1 3$%:& @&=,,#1&. 5-".) on
which see Steiner (1995).
41
Jouanna (1997) pp. 74-5.
42
As, for instance, Sophocles Electra does when she learns of Orestes death: U""' 4I-$J#18+
%*1 %$&b -# 384,-0*& / -*}89*& -$3' *I 978 3R 5#&$& 9' @>A,*%#&. (1019-20). Sophocles
Electra acts as a dramatic author much as Aeschylus Orestes will soon do, cf. Ringer (1998) pp.
127-212.
43
Rehm (2002) p. 86.
197
act of viewing that the audience are themselves engaged in.
44
The scene which follows is
itself a kind of reperformance of Orestes monodic prologue in full choral expression.
The women trace their grief in bloody wounds across their cheeks and rend their clothes,
mirroring Orestes cutting of the lock. But the womens traces of grief remain part of
them, held in their still living flesh. They mark their bodies, but do not divide them;
author and text remain united. And when Electra finally begins her own prayer, the young
woman echoes her brother in addressing her first words to Hermes Chthonios (124).
45

The repetition furthers the sense of double mimesis, Electra re-performs the script of her
brothers prayer, but now with Orestes, the unknown author, as silent audience.
It is well to note that this frame of theatrical self-consciousness was already at work
in the dedication of the lock itself, which is declared to be a deuteros penthtrios by
Orestes as he places it on his fathers tomb (7). Another lock, we are lead to understand,
has been dedicated to the river Inachos when Orestes passed into Argos. The onstage
dedication then re-enacts a first ritual act that we must imagine to have been performed
before the action of the play commenced.
46
Orestes action is a repetition, a
reperformance, that looks back in time to a lost moment between the close of the
Agamemnon and the beginning of the Choephoroi. Thus even before it becomes a text for
Electra, the lock points to the poets role in crafting these plays, weaving together the
temporal strands of the action as Cassandra had done under Apollos possession. Orestes
arrives already a re-performer of an earlier script, encoded beyond the limits of the stage.
But the onstage dedication is also a dramatization of that previous act of composition,
and it will be the central concern of the subsequent recognition scene to properly re-
perform the script that he has created. Now the encoder stands watching as his sister
encounters the scripts left by his earlier action. But in the face of her inability to
reperform the texts, he is powerless to reach her or to lessen her grief.
Stepping out of his silent observation, Orestes reveals himself and instructs Electra to
exchange her sorrowful words for a prayer of thanksgiving. He tells her that she has come

44
The focus on Orestes visual perception is well elucidated by Goldhill (1984) pp. 105-6.
45
On the significance of the chthonic god in the play as a whole, see Garvie (1970).
46
The precise dynamics of the dedications remain unclear. But the suggestion, put forth by
Solmsen (1967) p. 4, that both dedications are enacted in the course of the prologue would seem
to be invalidated by the fact that only one lock is found by Electra in the subsequent scene.
Garvie (1986) ad loc.
198
into view (#n' p1& 5#1' 215) of the one she has been seeking, that her prayers have
been answered. The sight (opsis) of Orestes, fully present before her, is unlike her visual
engagement with his earlier parts and traces. Now her brother, the author, stands before
her in his true and unmediated embodiment. Electra responds with disbelief. Her
incomplete understanding of the scriptedness of the lock and footprints, seeing them
either entirely divorced from their author (as was the case with the lock) or from their
reperformer (the footprints), leaves her at an impasse when the three come together. Her
brother demonstrates to her how the lock matches both of their heads and how both can
fit their feet into the prints by the tomb. But even as he draws her attention to the way that
the scriptory tokens connect him, their encoder, to her, their receiver and would-be
reperformer, Electra cannot fully comprehend the spatio-temporal dynamics at work.
This is not a problem of communication. Orestes could not be more plain in
expressing his identity (216-9):
2". 54W -+&4 ,6&*1,;= %*1 54"*?%0&b F8*-D&;
m8. ,6&*13' T80,-O& )*""= ,' (5)49"*?%0&O&.
2". 54W )8E' -+ 3{-4 -?9J=&: 54-#?9%=-:&;
m8. N3' #n%+ %R %=-#?' (%*V %<""*& >+"*&.

El: What man do you know me to have called for?
Or: I know that you have longed terribly for Orestes.
El: And in what way have I finally hit upon that for which I prayed?
Or: I am he. Search not for anyone more dear.

Orestes is baffled that his sister cannot recognize him in the flesh when she had seen his
hand in the dedication of the lock and the footprints by the tomb (225-8). Now that she
sees (~8D,4) she does not know him, but where she seemed to see ((3$5#1' ~8<&) him
through the tokens, she knew that it was he. But Electra cannot square his statements with
her certain knowledge of his absence, gleaned through the tokens by the grave. Now
Orestes is offering to reperform the texts that Electra does not know how to embody.
Playing the role which he authored himself, Orestes demonstrates his growing
sophistication in exploiting the power of scriptory poetics. But for Electra, the complex
layering short-circuits her still tentative understanding of the objects before her. She
claims that he is tricking her (@"". 3$"*& -1&., P0&., @%>+ %*1 )"05#1'; Are you
199
weaving some deception around me, stranger? 220);
47
that he is making her an object of
ridicule (@""' (& 545*K,1 -*K' (%*K' 9#"<& ;0"#1'; Do you wish to make a fool of me
before my foes? 222). She cannot see any other way to explain his presence before her.
Even when she tries to credit his claims, she does not even know how to address him,
since she cannot understand that he is truly present, and is indeed who he claims to be
(M' &-. T80,-O& -[8.(9c ,# )8*,#&&0):; Shall I address you as the one who is
Orestes? (224). She sees deception where Orestes presents a true embodiment of
scriptory reperformance.
It is only when Orestes reveals his own encoded object a cloak made for him by
Electra herself that she is able to fully accept her brothers presence (231-2):
n3*V 3' g>4,%4 -*V-*, ,{' Q89*& J#8$',
,)=;O' -# )"O9=', & 3C ;A8#1*& 984>A&

Look at this weaving, the work of your hand, of the blows of your shuttle, and in it
the image of a hunt.

The woven garment, which is also the symbol of Klytemnestras past and Orestes future
deceit,
48
stands as the first fully realized script of the play.
49
Orestes description points
both to the moment of its encoding (,)=;O' )"O9=') and to the message that it bears
(;A8#1*& 984>A&). Electra looks upon the object of which she knows herself to be the
author and can recognize Orestes as its reperformer literally giving body to the cloak
that he wears on his back. The moment of full recognition comes with the completion of
the circle, as author, script, and re-performer are together onstage.
The slow unfolding of the recognition scene and extended lyric amoibaion of the
subsequent kommos draw focus away from the dream, first introduced by the Chorus in
the parodos (32ff.), until the plays mid-point. In their initial description, the Chorus gave
no indication of the dreams content, only the fearful and uncertain nature of its arrival
and the resulting decision to offer libations at Agamemnons tomb. Once his reunion with

47
The dolos will, however, be deployed by Orestes against his mother.
48
Sider (1978), who claims that the cloth would have been held up rather than worn by Orestes,
p. 26. The same term that is applied to Electras weaving, g>4,%4, is used by Orestes in
displaying his dead mother and Aigisthus at 1015: )4-8*5-$&*& ;' g>4,%4.
49
As Steiner has noted, the weaving also represents the culmination of a progression moving
from an excerpt to an imprint to a full-fledged pictogram. Steiner (1994) p. 35.
200
his sister has been fully achieved, the characters attention returns to the dream the
reason for the womens unusual and fortuitous visit to the tomb. At Orestes bidding and
encouragement, the Chorus relay Klytemnestras report: that she dreamt she gave birth to
a serpent (-#5#K& 38=5*&-' Q3*P#& 527) and wrapped it in swaddling clothes as if it were
a child ()413E' 3+5O& 529), but that when she brought it to her breast to nurse the snake
drew blood mixed in with her milk ((& 9="45-1 ;8$%F*& 4o%4-*' ,)=,41 533). From
this point Electra will remain silent, her role within the meditation on scriptory poetics
now replaced by Klytemnestra and her dream-text.
The use of the dream trope in the unfolding of the matricide is not an Aeschylean
innovation. Stesichorus too made use of a snake dream in his Oresteia, but it seems clear
even from our limited evidence that Aeschylus significantly altered the content and
function of the dream in his dramatic treatment. Stesichorus places the main focus on
Orestes patrimony, representing Orestes, the young Pleisthenid king, as born from the
head of his serpent father.
50
By contrast, in Aeschylus it is Klytemnestra who gives birth
to the serpent and suckles it at her breast. The alteration shifts the emphasis to the
matrilineal relationship, and the mixture of blood and milk that the snake draws from
Klytemnestras breast establishes a clear model for the moral and emotional ambiguity of
Orestes matricide.
51
Moreover, the reconfiguration permits the ultimate accomplishment
of the matricide to comprise an onstage reperformance of the dream by fully embodied
agents. Orestes and Klytemnestra will both participate in the reenactment, their actions
determined by a script that has already been clearly established.
The dream, like the lock and the weaving, is an encoded message possessed of the
fundamental qualities of a script. And Klytemnestras perception of the dream (Q3*P#&
527) is like Electras understanding of the lock and prints, through which she seemed to
see Orestes ((3$5#1' ~8<& 228). And like the earlier objects, the snake is perceived
visually (an *}-*1 %=-41*& p4&*& 534, as Orestes claims). The snake dream is not an
object per se, in that it is devoid of the material status possessed by those earlier tokens of
recognition. It does not point us to the script as mediating object, but to the shared

50
Fr. 219 Davies: -<1 3C 38=5:& (3$5O,# %*"#K& 5=84 F#F8*-:%0&*' [58*&, / (5 3.[84
-*V F4,1"#V' s"#1,;#&+34' (>=&O. Garvie (1970) pp. 83-4, Devereux (1976) pp. 172-6, 189-
90.
51
Alaux (1997) p. 131.
201
physicality which scriptedness makes possible.
52
It is in relation to this potentiality that
the unique symbolism of the snake, as living portent, is brought to bear. The dream can
function as a script insofar as it sets out a fixed dynamic to be enacted by a specified
number of agents but without any internal ability to bring these actions to fruition. But it
contains an added element, the corporality of the living actor, whose body like the
snakes must be able to enter into and adapt to the symbolic roles that it is asked to
play. Like a script, the dream must be reperformed, but it is also itself already a
performance.
The centrality of the idea of embodiment and of the necessity of reperformance in
establishing the scriptory rather than merely portentous character of the dream is
made vivid through Orestes immediate desire to re-enact it, casting himself in the role of
the serpent. Orestes recognizes the similarities between himself and the snake; they are
bound together (,?95$"":' 543) and twinned just as Electra was twinned with her
brother through the lock and footprints. Born from the same source (-E& 4I-E& JD8*&
(5"1)v& (%*W 544) and suckled at the same breast (%4,-E& @%>0J4,5' (%E&
;8#)-A81*&), the snake, like Electra, is an interchangeable double of Orestes himself.
But Orestes does not confuse the similarities for identity. He sees himself in the snake
and understands that it is possible to embrace and inhabit its role. And he recognizes that
to participate in the dramatic action he cannot simply act as his own agent, he must also
become the beast at his mothers breast (548-50):
3#K -*+ &1&, M' Q;8#p#& Q5)49"*& -084',
;4&#K& F14+:' (53845*&-:;#W' 3' (9v
5-#+&: &1&, M' -*}&#18*& (&&0)#1 -$3#.

Then she, as she nurtured the terrible portent, must die violently. I, having
become the snake, will kill her, as the dream tells me to.

The transformation, at once literal and metaphoric, follows the dream script (M'
-*}&#18*& (&&0)#1 -$3#). Through his mastery of the poetics of scriptory embodiment,
Orestes can become the serpent ready to reperform the drama with his own body.

52
In this respect, we may draw a contrast with Bellerophons dream in O.13, analyzed in the
previous chapter, where the material status of the apport represented the central nexus of
symbolic power within the episode.
202
One might think that his adoption of the dream-script and his role as serpent would
suffice to prepare Orestes to enact the matricide, but Aeschylus presents one final
examination of scriptory poetics before bringing the play to its climax. Orestes dolos,
commanded by Apollo to match that with which Klytemnestra killed Agamemnon, will
also be set out in a manner that exploits the special spatio-temporal dynamics of scriptory
poetics, and its ability to transpose speech into the voice of a reperformer. With respect to
key characteristics, the dolos is both a contrast and a parallel to the dream portent.
53
Like
the dream, the dolos is prophetic, but where the latter is adopted at the clear instructions
of Apollo (*P+4' (>A%1,#&, / [&4P U)$"":&, %=&-1' @p#?3R' -E )8+&. 558-9), the
origins of the former are left enigmatically obscured.
54
Orestes, not Klytemnestra will be
the author of the dolos; he will compose it onstage in full view of the audience, not in the
dark recesses of the house (%?J$;#& 35). For Orestes to perform his drama, it will
require, like the snake, a bodily transformation, but now set in the language of the stage
of costume and disguise rather than the uncertain realm of metaphoric embodiment and
transmutation. Orestes and Pylades will literally play the part of Phocian strangers,
concealing their true identities with travelers clothes and foreign sounding speech (560-
4):
P0&L 978 #n5c', )4&-#"{ ,49R& QJ:&,
P: ,d& @&38W -3' (>' j85#+*?' )6"4'
s?"=3b, P0&*' -# 54W 3*86P#&*' 3$%:&.
[%>: 3C >:&R& ,*%#& s48&O,+34,
9"c,,O' @?-R& :5+3*' %1%*?%0&:.

In the guise of a stranger, wearing full traveling attire, I will go into the palace
gates with Pylades here, a stranger and ally of the house. We will both speak in
the Parnassian tongue, imitating the battle cry of the Phocians.

Just as with the dream, the dolos will rely on the ability of scriptory poetics to transmute
identity and to separate author from reperformance. Orestes, fully in command of his
script, will serve both as author and reperformer, becoming another speaker when he
takes up the false words that he has crafted for himself to impersonate.

53
Alaux (1997) p. 135.
54
Garvie (1986) ad loc. Moreau (1997). On the connection between this cry and those of the
Agamemnon parodos, see Heath (1999c) p. 404 n. 29.
203
While the later aspect, Orestes reperformative function within the dolos, is clear from
his use of disguise, his agency in crafting the language of his imagined drama is
dynamically demonstrated by his emphatic use of direct speech, twice within the course
of seven trimeter lines, in his subsequent description of his plan (565-76).
54W 3R ;?8:8D& *}-1' & >4138 >8#&W
30P41-', ()#13R 341%*& 3$%*' 545*K'
%#&*V%#& *g-:' Z,-' ()#15=y#1& -1&7
3$%*1' )484,-#+J*&-4 54W -=3' (&&0)#1&
-+ 3R )6"b,1 -E& 50-O& @)#+89#-41
e91,;*', #e)#8 *i3#& Q&3O%*' )48c&; 570
#n 3' *]& @%#+p: F4"E& j85#+:& )?"D&
5@5#K&*& (& ;8$&*1,1& #H8A,: )4-8$',
a 54W %*"v& Q)#1-= %' * 54-7 ,-$%4
(8#K, ,=>' e,;1, 54W 54-' />;4"%*d' 54"#K&,
)8W& 4I-E& #n)#K& )*34)E' ~ P0&*'; &#58E& 575
;A,:, )*3c5#1 )#81F4"v& J4"5#6%4-1.

And if none of the doormen receive us with a welcoming mind, since the house is
possessed by evils, we will wait so that someone passing by the house may wonder
and say Why does Aigisthus keep this suppliant outside his door, if he is at home
and knows of the situation? But if I enter into the palace gates and find that man
on the throne of my father, or if arriving he speaks to me, know this, that laying
eyes on him, before he can say What country is the stranger from? I will kill
him, embracing him with swift bronze.

Orestes is composing his own scriptory poem, with lines for actors in the case of two
possible outcomes that are being (pre-)performed now by their author at the moment of
composition a proleptic impersonation of the characters who might give voice and body
to this speech in reperformance. It is not long before Orestes scriptory composition is
made good and his own words are echoed back to him in the voice of the oiketes: #ij&,
@5*6: )*34)E' ~ P0&*'; )$;#&; (657). Like the murder itself, which will be all but
enacted onstage,
55
we will see and hear, as we did not in the Agamemnon, the words of
Orestes compositional oratio recta articulated by other characters within the play.
Orestes first exchange with his mother will begin with a different type of
reperformance, but one which reflects a kindred mastery of the peculiar spatio-temporal
properties of embodied scriptory performance. Disguised as the Phocian traveler,

55
Segal (1985b) p. 17.
204
Daulieus, Orestes no longer encodes the speech of his future interlocutors, but composes
the imagined language of his fictional past.
56
The hero is inventing his script as he goes;
having divided himself between two states of fact and fiction through the conceptual
framework of scriptory poetics, he can move through space and time (not unlike
Cassandra in the previous play) orchestrating the events onstage and fabricating a verbal
past to match his self-constructed future. Nothing of past, present, or future is beyond his
reach. As the foreigner, Daulieus, he commands his own fully embodied impersonation
and while verbally impersonating the equally false speech of Strophius, bringing him to
life as well in the hic et nunc of the action (677-88):
@9&v' )8E' @9&D-' #i)# ,?%F4"v& @&A8,
(P1,-*8A,4' 54W ,4>O&+,4' ~3$&,
u-8*>+*' ~ :5#6' )#6;*%41 978 (& "$9L
()#+)#8 ["":', P0&', #n' l89*' 5+#1', 680
)8E' -*d' -#5$&-4' )4&3+5:' %#%&O%0&*'
-#;&#D-' T80,-O& #n)0, %O34%D' "=;b.
#e-' *]& 5*%+y#1& 3$P4 &15A,#1 >+":&,
#e-' *]& %0-*15*&, #n' -E )<& @#W P0&*&,
;=)-#1&, (>#-%7' -=,3# )$8;%#?,*& )="1&. 685
&V& 978 "0FO-*' J4"50*? )"#?8c%4-4
,)*3E& 505#?;#& @&38E' #] 5#5"4?%0&*?.
-*,4V-' @5*6,4' #i)*&.

An unknown man chanced upon me who was unknown to him his name was
Strophius of Phocia, I later learned from our conversation and, having inquired
and learning of my journey, he said Since, stranger, you are traveling to Argos,
remember to tell the parents of Orestes that he is dead. Do not forget! For
whether the opinion of his dear ones will be to fetch him, or to bury him as a
metic, a stranger for ever more, bring their instructions back to me. For as it is a
bronze urn keeps the ashes of a man who has been well lamented.

The deception is about identity, but in a markedly spatio-temporal manner that signals its
scriptory foundation. And as he relates the tale of his own death, he encases it in the
embedded temporality of past speech made present (#i)# 677; #n)0 682; @5*6,4' #i)*&
688). So confident is Orestes in his control of the scriptory dynamic that he dares to

56
The centrality of Orestes active deception to Aeschylus dramatization of the myth can be seen
even more clearly through comparison with Sophocles quite different approach. Where Orestes
false speech is the keystone of the Choephoroi, Sophocles assigns the role of pseudangelos to the
Paedagogus in his Electra, presenting us with a hero constitutionally incapable of sustaining any
type of verbal or physical dishonesty in the face of his sister.
205
mention his own name (-#;&#D-' T80,-O& #n)0). And so certain is he of his ability to
balance the many identities that he has taken on that he is willing to falsify his own death
an event of which he is both the author and reperformer and to do so before the gaze
of the mother who gave birth to him.
57
As disguised performer, Orestes distances the
reperformance from the author of his words, turning the latter into an object ("0FO'
J4"50*' 686) not unlike the scripts which he exchanged with Electra in the plays
opening scene.
58
But as its author, he knows that his true identity is not lost in the body
that gives voice to his false speech.
When the final encounter between mother and son is at hand, Orestes no longer has
recourse to his self-scripted transformation. He must, finally, take up the role of the
serpent that he so brutally boasted to inhabit. Klytemnestra, having recognized Orestes
after the murder of Aigisthus (P?&{54 -*})*' (P 4n&19%=-:& 887), bears her breast
before him,
59
forcing him to face her as true embodiment of the dream-script (896-8).
()+,J#', )4K, -$&3# 3' 4e3#,41, -05&*&,
%4,-$&, )8E' ,d )*""7 3R F8+y:& z%4
*}"*1,1& (PA%#"P4' #I-84>C' 9="4.

Hold back, son, have reverence before this breast, my child, from which you often
sleepily drew nourishing milk sucking upon it with your gums.

Despite all of his conceptual preparation, Orestes falters at the final reenactment and it is
only through the insistence of Pylades that he is able to return to the script (899-902):
m8. s?"=3O, -+ 38=,:; %O-08' 4n3#,;D 5-4&#K&;
s?. )*V 3R -E "*1)E& *P+*? %4&-#6%4-4
-7 )?;$J8O,-4, )1,-= -' #I*85c%4-4;
z)4&-4' (J;8*d' -D& ;#D& Y9*V )"0*&.


57
Again Sophocles presents a commentary on the boldness of the dolos, where Orestes inability
to go through with the deceit in the face of his sisters grief (1180ff.) stands in contrast to his
earlier boastful confidence in the stratagem (59-64): S+ 9=8 %# "?)#K -*V;', N-4& "$9L ;4&v& /
Q89*1,1 ,:;D 5@P#&095:%41 5"0*'; / 3*5D %C& *I3C& {%4 ,d& 5083#1 545$& / ^3O 978
#i3*& )*""=51' 54W -*d' ,*>*d' / "$9L %=-O& ;&,5*&-4' #i;', N-4& 3$%*?' / Q";:,1&
4];1', (5-#-+%O&-41 )"0*&
58
An interesting suggestion made by Rush Rehm, that further connects the two scenes, is that in
claiming to be dead, Orestes is also reperforming the role of his dead father, whose return from
the underworld had been the central theme of the kommos. Rehm (2002) pp. 85-6.
59
The gesture also recalls the multivalent lion symbolism of the Agamemnon. Knox (1952) pp.
23-4.
206
Or: O Pylades, what should I do? Do I dare kill my mother?
Py: What would the future hold for the prophecies of Apollo made clear at Pythia
or of trusted oaths? Make all men your enemies before any of the gods.

With the reaffirmation of Apollos oracle, itself recast in a sort of reperformance by the
hitherto silent Pylades,
60
the necessity that Orestes perform his identity as snake is joined
with the identity play of the dolos of which Apollo was also the ultimate cause. The
harmony of these two prophetically inspired scripts reflects the mirrored dynamics of
poetic reperformance and oracular interpretation that is, of the prophetic poetics of
scriptory performance. The inescapability of reperformance, here set out as a divine
imperative, is already encoded in the script. The actor must step bodily into the role set
out for him. The action may be delayed but it cannot be avoided.
As the verbal exchange prefiguring the deed itself draws to its close, it is
Klytemnestra who makes explicit the scenes reliance on the dream-text when she
recognizes Orestes as at once her son and the serpent at her breast (929):
* '9v -#5*V,4 -$&3' >1& (;8#p=%O&.
O I have given birth to and nurtured this serpent.

Her words echo those that Orestes used when he first voiced his keen desire to participate
in the scriptory reperformance (M' Q;8#p#& Q5)49"*& -084'). The term that he used
then, teras, has a double valence, meaning both portent and beast. In his initial,
autonomous interpretation, Orestes could see the animal in both its symbolic and
corporeal nature. Now, within the fully embodied reenactment of the script, the language
is unambiguous: he has truly become ensnaked.
In order to arrive at this status, Orestes has had to physically embody the multiple
layers of signification seen and unseen, literal and figurative, past and future that
finally permit him to perform the action of the plays most vividly present moment. The
insistent physicality and emphasis on the somatic realities of the matricide,
61
the visceral
power of Klytemnestras bare breast itself an emphatically corporeal reperformance not
only of the dream text, but of the action of Homers Hecuba
62
force us to conceptualize

60
Pylades speaks with the voice of Apollo himself. Knox (1972) p. 109.
61
Aeschylus emphasis on the physical meaning of the relationship between mother and son, is
the focus of the discussion by Segal (1985b) pp. 17-8.
62
On the allusion, see O'Neill (1998).
207
Orestes metamorphosis in its most physical form. He has, of course, not literally been
turned into a snake, but in his physical embodiment of the role of snake, it is his own
living body that must experience and enact the action of the script.
It was through the plays opening scene which set out most clearly and deliberately
the dynamics of scriptory poetics as they bear upon the plays central questions of bodily
presence and the physical nature of identity that Orestes developed his ability to
dissociate and multiply his body through external symbols. Now, at the close of the play,
when he has put this skill to the test, Orestes repents his action. And his despair at having
performed the deed echoes what Electra felt when scriptory action eluded her. As he
steps away from the matricide, the snake stops being Orestes own dedicated symbol. His
moment of embodiment has passed and he will soon have to contend with a chorus of
snake-haired Erinyes who embody the creature in far more terrible and fearsome ways
than Orestes can yet imagine. The terrible price that the furies will demand of the
matricide in the Eumenides is adumbrated in the final lines of the Choephoroi. While the
Chorus congratulate Orestes for having rid the house of two serpents (3?*K&
3845$&-*1& 1047),
63
the young man begins to have visions of the gruesome Erinyes
appearing before his eyes (1048-50):
, ,
3%:4W 9?&4K5#' 4o3#, *89$&:& 3+5O&,
>41*J+-:&#' 54W )#)"#5-4&O%0&41
)?5&*K' 38=5*?,1& *I50-' & %#+&41%' (9c.

Oh, oh, these servant women, like Gorgons, dark-robed and enlaced with dense
snakes. I can remain no longer.

Once the means for his triumph, the snake will now become embodied by the force of
retribution. At the close of the play we are forced to contemplate the darker truths of what
it means for scriptory poetics to be vindicated by matricide; to enable, through the
embodied dynamics of the snake, the most unthinkable murder and then be seamlessly
translated into the most terrible figures of hate and rage. For in the Eumenides it will not

63
This is not the first time that Klytemnestra is associated with a snake. Once in the Agamemnon
she is referred to by Cassandra as a serpent (Ag. 1233) and at the beginning of the Choephoroi,
before the content of the dream has been revealed, Orestes himself likens her to an adder (248-9).
On the characterization, see Whallon (1958) pp. 272-3.
208
be the ephebic Orestes but the ancient chthonic Furies, who have worked their way
slowly through the trilogy, who find their own, serpentine embodiment as the Chorus of
its final play.

2. WALL AND STAGE
In his eighth Olympian, Pindar paints a more optimistic picture of how the terrible
physicality of the snake bears upon the embodied reperformances of scriptory poetry.
Pindar deploys a snake portent to explore some of the same concerns about the embodied
quality of poetic reperformance, but where Aeschylus used the materiality of scriptory
objects to aid his demonstration of the need for a human actor to bring the script back to
life, Pindar draws a contrast. The ode pits inanimate physicality against the power of the
living spirit drawing attention to the limitations of monumental fixity. Although brief in
comparison with the extended meditation of the Choephoroi, the ode sets out a dense
matrix of prophecy, direct speech, and poetic tradition from which emerges a positive
vision of the awesome potential of embodied reperformance represented by the snake.
The snakes appear within the central mythical narrative of the poem, which recounts
how Aiakos was brought to Tory to aid Poseidon and Apollo in the construction of the
citys wall. As mortal sunergos in the divine endeavor, Aiakos presence is needed to
enable the walls ultimate destruction, a fact which is highlighted from the outset of the
tale (31-6):
-E& )4K' ~ 4-*V' #I8?%03:& -# s*,#13=&,
"+L %0""*&-#' ()W ,-0>4&*& -#VP41, 54"0,4&-* ,?&#89$&
-#+J#*', & N-1 &1& )#)8:%0&*&
/8&?%0&:& )*"0%:&
)-*"1)$8;*1' (& %=J41' 35
"=F8*& @%)&#V,41 54)&$&.

[Aiakos,] whom the son of Leto and broad-ruling Poseidon, when they were going
to build the battlement in Ilion, summoned to work with them on the wall, which
was fated in the surge of wars to breathe fierce smoke in city-sacking battles.

209
The motivation for Aiakos role in the walls construction is not here explicitly
articulated.
64
Rather, the vivid description of the future event places the narrative within a
broader timeframe of divine and human events; immovable destiny determined at some
point in the past set in relief against the bleak human future of war and destruction. Much
more than in Aeschylus treatment, the temporal dimensions will be key to Pindars
representation of the snake. As the representative of embodied reperformance, the snake
not only permits us to understand how a man may be transformed into another through
mimetic reperformance, but also how this operation can be brought about across vast
distances of space, and more importantly, time; how through its countless reperformative
iterations, the scriptory poem is inhabited by any number of actors, each bringing the
voices of the past to life again through their own bodies. Through the already complex
chronological matrix of this introductory portrait, Pindar presents the wall as a locus of
heightened temporal charge. A place where time can profitably be explored.
An important reason that the wall is readily susceptible to a strong association with
temporal concerns arises from the fact that Pindar is reworking a Homeric scene of
widespread renown. The Homeric model, from the seventh book of the Iliad, recounts
how Apollo and Poseidon resented the Achaians for constructing their own wall around
their camp to rival the one which they themselves built around the city of Troy, and how
Zeus assured them that at the wars end the Achaian wall would be destroyed and erased
from human memory.
65
Already, then, in Homers text, we encounter a contrast between
the longevity of the walls divine construction and the transience of a similar human
endeavor drawn in the sharpest terms.
66

For all of its allure, it is not the scene from book seven but its continuation in book
twelve of the Iliad that has most fascinated critics ancient and modern.
67
In a brief
digression at the opening of the book, Homer describes the Achaian walls ultimate
destruction, as the Olympian gods join forces with the divine rivers of Troy and wash all

64
As Burnet notes, it has been suggested that the tale is a Pindaric innovation, but this seems
unlikely. Burnett (2005) p. 213. For the argument in favor of Pindaric innovation, see Carey
(1989a).
65
7.433-66.
66
Scodel (1982).
67
For an overview, see Porter (2011).
210
traces of the wall from the plain.
68
This return to a previously concluded episode, without
any further development in relation to the subsequent progression of the narrative, is
highly unusual for the epic poet. Even more remarkable, however, is the temporal quality
of the digression in book twelve, which looks well beyond the boundaries of the war and
the poem itself to recount the only significantly developed proleptic narrative of the Iliad.
Moreover, the proleptic stance also connects the narrative with the poet himself, pulling
the narrative forward into direct comparison with the poets present time.
69
Andrew Ford
reads the passage from book twelve as one in a series of moments that show the epics
interest in signs as concrete devices for making fame last.
70
For Ford, who sees the
excursus as a sign of Homers extreme distrust of writing (what he calls the failure of
monumentality), the poets self-positioning in relation to the event is key to
understanding the walls significance.
71
By placing the destruction outside of the time-
frame covered by the Iliads narrative, and more importantly by relating the event from
a different perspective from the rest of the epic as if looking back on his heroes []
from outside his poem,
72
Homer marks out this passage as particularly important for
understanding the temporal dynamics of his own epic narration as he responds to the idea
that his poem is a written object. A similar, though more optimistic interpretation of this
remarkable passage was also prevalent amongst critics of Pindars time. As James Porter
has recently shown, by the fifth century, the wall and its destruction had come to be a

68
12.3-33.
69
As Grethlein points out, explicit temporal juxtaposition between past and present circumstances
commonly accompanies the description of important material objects in the Homeric poems;
Grethlein (2008) pp. 40-3.
70
Ford (1992) p. 150. This idea is explored and expanded by Grethlein (2008) pp. 34-5.
71
Ford (1992) p. 148-57.
72
Ford (1992) pp. 148, 9. The special positioning of the narrator is effected through the use of the
key word Y%1;0*1, which suggests that the heroes are not just earlier men but a quite separate
race between present men and gods. p. 148. The point is also made by Scodel (1982). The
word Y%1;0*1 appears only here in Homeric epic, a fact which leads Gregory Nagy to argue that
whereas hres is the appropriate word in epic, hmtheoi is more appropriate to a style of
expression that looks beyond epic. Nagy (1999) p. 160. Pindar himself may have been sensitive
not only to the broader metapoetic import of the Iliad passage, but to the marked nature of the
term. Pindar does not generally use the word unlike his contemporaries, Bacchilides and
Simonides, the latter of whom employed it in order to emphasize the distance between the present
and the mythic past (fr. 18 PMG). Yet, remarkably, Pindar deploys it three times in the course of
Pythian 4, his most epic composition, likely signaling his understanding of the charged epic
history of the term.
211
symbol of the poets art, and more importantly, of his ability to construct poetic fictions
that were unlike a physical wall immune to the effects of mortal time. The wall, now
gone from view but preserved in Homers verse, became what Porter dubs a temporal
sphragis, locating the poet in time while also demonstrating his ability to transcend its
limitations through his poetry.
73

But in order to appreciate Pindars highly sophisticated engagement with his Homeric
model, we must return to Olympian 8 and examine how this narrative reperformance of
an epic scene unfolds.
74
Having brought the gods and hero to Troy, Pindar gives no
account of the events surrounding the walls construction. His narrative skips directly to
the end, when the work has been completed. It is then that three silvery snakes appear
before the three laborers. They try to jump up onto the newly built wall; two fall to their
deaths and one survives. Apollo then interprets the portent, telling Aiakos that the omen
signals two things: that the wall will be destroyed where Aiakos hand has made it and
that his progeny, in the first and third generations, will contribute to its destruction (37-
46):
9"4?5*W 3C 38=5*&-#', ()#W 5-+,;O &0*&,
)689*& (,4""$%#&*1 -8#K', * 36* %C& 5=)#-*&,
4];1 3 @-?y$%#&*1 p?J7' F="*&,
#' 3 (&$8*?,# F*=,41'. 40
Q&&#)# 3 @&-+*& ~8%4+&:& -084' #I;d' U)$"":&
s0894%*' @%>W -#4K', 8:', J#8E' (894,+41' _"+,5#-41
' (%*W >=,%4 "09#1 !8*&+34
)#%>;C& F48?93*6)*? B1$'

*I5 [-#8 )4+3:& ,0;#&, @"" z%4 )8c-*1' [8P#-41 45
54W -#8-=-*1'.
75
' 84 ;#E' ,=>4 #e)41'

But, when [the wall] was newly built, silvery snakes tried to leap upon the tower,
three of them. Two fell to the ground and died there in a daze, but the one sprang
upon it with a war-cry. And pondering the omen before him Apollo spoke straight
out Pergamon is taken around the work of your hands, hero, thus the apparition
spoke to me, sent by the son of Kronos, deep-thundering Zeus. Not without your
children, but they will be lead by the first and the third ones. Thus spoke the god
clearly

73
Porter (2011) p. 32. The ancient critical discussion of this scene can be traced to the fifth
century and most likely began significantly earlier, see Porter (2011).
74
On poetic quotation as reperformance, see above, pp. 95-117.
75
On this notorious crux, see Gildersleeve (1885) ad loc., Hubbard (1987).
212

The description of the snakes draws attention to their physical presence. They are
introduced with reference to their color, but the term glaucos does not simply signal their
gray hue. In Homer and other archaic Greek poetry the term is imbued with the sense of
glistening, as in the sea or moon and stars. The shimmering quality of their scales points
first to their motion, and later to their inherently changeable and varying appearance. But
more critically for our discussion, it places an emphasis on the corporeal nature of these
attributes. This suggestive picture of an unstable, but always physical, mutability, is
elaborated through the pointed use of metaphor in the subsequent narration. Pindar
deploys his epic model to emphasize the corporality of the creatures actions. Through
the deft manipulation of markedly Homeric vocabulary, Pindar permits the snakes to
inhabit a space midway between men and beasts, between his own text and Homers. The
snakes leap up ((,4""$%#&*1) onto the wall like Iliadic heroes leaping from their
chariots
76
or like Hector leaping upon the Achaian wall ()6"4' 54W -#KJ*' (,<"-*
13.679).
77
The verb stresses the physicality of the action only one will complete the leap
successfully while also hinting at the creatures anthropomorphic possibilities. This
effect is enhanced by the equally Homeric language that is used to describe the deaths of
the two failed leapers. Like Homers warriors, they fall into the dust
78
and lose their
psuchai.
79
Even though the word holds little of our modern conception of soul, the
attribution of psuchai to the snakes casts their deaths as almost human, since the term is
rarely found applied to animals in our extant archaic texts.
80
For the surviving snake, the
metaphoric frame intensifies with the use of the verb boa, recalling the battle cry of the
Homeric warrior (F*A)
81
and paired with yet another term commonly associated with

76
(P /J0:& ,d& -#6J#,1& "-* J4%<y#. (11x).
77
Also Il.12.438: (,A"4-* -#KJ*' UJ41D&, 12.466: (,<"-* )6"4', 13.679: )6"4' 54W -#KJ*'
(,<"-*.
78
()W 94+b /, J4%<y# / or (& 5*&+b,1 / 5=))#,#& (6x). The verb only appears in the aorist in
Homer giving a stronger allusive force to Pindars 5=)#-*&. In Homer, however, the verb is
almost always line initial, thus enjambed from the preceding line, and followed by detail of the
location of the fall. The spareness of Pindars construction, without specification of the place
from or to which they fell within the clause, is markedly un-Homeric.
79
Loss of p?JA as a periphrasis for death (24x).
80
See Heath (2005) pp. 47-9 with bibliography. The same term is used of the snakes killed by
Herakles in N.1 (9J*%0&*1' 3C J8$&*' / p?J7' @)0)&#?,#& %#"0:& @>=-:&. 46-7).
81
As we saw above, similar language is used at Sept. 381.
213
martial epic, enorou.
82
The introduction of vocal expression emerges from the expressly
physical description, placing the animals capacity to produce sound within the
framework of his bodily exertion.
Through the dissonant and metaphorical use of Homeric vocabulary, the physicality
and sense of the snakes bodily substance stands in harmony with their almost protean
changeability. The wall, by contrast, is depicted as fixed and unmoving (5-+,;O). Like
the shield of Aiax, one of the descendants of Aiakos included in the prophecy, the tower
stands as an immovable bulwark.
83
The prophecy elaborates on and also complexifies
this relationship between the two central symbols of the passage. The dynamic and
animate corporality of the snakes displays the qualities necessary for embodied
reperformance, a feature which is all the more striking when seen in contrast to the static
and inanimate wall. But it is only through Apollos elucidation of the portentous event,
with its multiple layers of reenactment, that the passage demonstrates the full symbolic
potential of the snakes to represent scriptory reperformance.
Apollos speech is delivered in the unmediated hic et nunc of direct speech, the
formal structure most open to considerations of poetic reperformance and scriptedness.
Although the speech is relatively brief it is, like so many of the speeches that we have
examined so far, a highly charged node of meaning with competing and complementary
implications. The layering of voice over voice and text over text is itself an essential
characteristic of the reanimation of a poetic script, and it is fitting that Olympian 8, with
its primary focus on the transformative potential of a single moment of physical presence
should demonstrate this fact with particularly richness. In what follows, I will try to
isolate the key elements of this complex harmony.
The most immediate way in which Apollos words constitute a reperformance is
through their relationship to the snakes themselves. As if working from the same script,
Apollo reenacts the snakes appearance, translating their physical display into a verbal
message. The speech, which is framed within the poets narrative by clear markers of
embedded speech (Q&&#)# 41; ' [] #e)41' 46), also contains a further embedding:
Apollos conscious quotation or rather paraphrase of the snakes themselves (' (%*W

82
cf. Il.10.486; 11.149; 11.217; 16.783.
83
[e4'] >08:& ,=5*' -# )689*& (3x).
214
>=,%4 "09#1 43). The choice of language to describe the portent is significant. In
introducing Apollos speech, the narrator referred to the snakes as a teras, an ambiguous
word that can mean both omen and beast. The term acknowledges the unstable status
of the three snakes, who are both literal, corporeal agents within the narrative and
symbolic vessels that allegorically and metaphorically represent figures other than
themselves. But for Apollo, the snakes are a phasma, a visual cue that nevertheless
speaks to him and from which he discerns the script for his own reperformance. For the
narrator, Apollo seems almost to be in conversation with the surviving snake, speaking to
its face (@&-+*& 41), perhaps even responding to it, as the adverb can indicate when
paired with a verb of speaking.
84
But Apollo knows that the snakes too are reperformers,
and discerns the source of their message as coming from Zeus (!8*&+34 / )#%>;C&
F48?93*6)*? B1$' 42-3). Apollo sees the snakes reperformance and immediately
comes into communication with the author of the script. The divine mantis readily sees
how the terrible portent bears on the lives of those who witnessed it.
At the same time, however, the snakes are themselves reperformers of the work of
Apollo, aided by Poseidon and Aiakos, in building the wall. The cadre of three workmen
two divine and one human is matched in a perfect inversion by the three snakes two
dead and one surviving who try to leap onto the newly built wall.
85
The snakes do not
faithfully reenact the construction that has already taken place so much as translate the
completed actions of gods and man into the form of their future consequences. (In this
way their appearance mirrors Apollos translation into words.) As the narrator
demonstrated at the outset of the myth, the walls destruction was already built into the
moment of its construction ()#)8:%0&*& 31). The script for both the workmen and the
snakes is the same, but the two reperformances with their differing temporal axes diverge
markedly. The snakes signal the underlying connection through their actions and Apollo
points to (,=>4 46) their enigmatic relationship to the deeds which he and his
collaborators have just performed.
Beyond the wall itself, the basis of the correspondence between the snakes and the
builders is the divergent status of one member of the group of three. Amongst the

84
E.g. [-E& 3] @&-+*& O}34 (72x).
85
Robbins (1986) p. 318.
215
workmen, Aiakos is distinguished by his mortality. Amongst the snakes, the survivor is
distinguished by his escape from death. The difficulty of seeing Aiakos in the figure of
the triumphant serpent, not to mention the accompanying problem that the gods must then
be represented by the dead snakes, has long been a source of critical debate.
86
But the
aberrant status of Aiakos, on which the connection ultimately rests, is brought to the fore
in Apollos speech. Apollo employs the vocative, hrs, to make clear that the prophecy
is intended for Aiakos alone. Poseidon, who will remain unmentioned until the
narratives end, either does not need interpretation to grasp the portents meaning, or does
not care, or both.
87
The isolation of Aiakos as Apollos sole addressee is mirrored in the
prophecy itself, which singles him out as the cause of Troys future destruction. Nowhere
is Aiakos mortality explicitly mentioned, but Apollos prophetic words offer an active
description of what it means for Aiakos, a mortal man, to work alongside the gods.
The tension between divine and human construction, and the divergent relation to
time which they enjoy, is already at the heart of Homers treatment of the wall. Here we
can see how Pindar recasts the Iliadic paradigm, making Aiakos an asset rather than a
shortcoming. Unlike a monument, the logic of the script is predicated on absence. The
author must depart so that the reperformer can take his place and give new life to his
words. Truly the snakes cannot reperform the work of the gods, for once completed it
stands fixed and immovable like the wall itself. There is space around Aiakos action
(@%>W -#4K', 8:', J#8E' (894,+41' 42) for another to step in, to inhabit his place and
let out a war cry. For Homer, whose wall was constructed in parallel to, and in some
ways on analogy with, the performance of funeral rites for the countless men fallen in
battle, death brings with it the threat of erasure. The construction of the Homeric wall
the symbol of the written word postpones but does not fully prevail over the ultimate
anonymity of mortality. But for the fifth-century interpreter of the passage, this fate has
been overcome in the walls poetic survival. The potential for reperformance not yet
fully integrated into the conceptual landscape of the Homeric text turns the walls

86
Robbins (1986), Hill (1963).
87
Pindar inverts the Homeric paradigm, making Apollo the speaker and Poseidon the silent
companion where in the Iliad it was Poseidon who verbalized the position of the gods.
216
destruction into the moment of its greatest glory and most enduring presence.
88
In this
inverted world of scriptory reperformance, where death itself permits immortality
through the bodies of others and the physical integrity of the written word is nothing in
comparison to the power of a human being to re-animate the voice of the dead through
the medium of his own body, the snakes can stand as they do living for mortal and dead
for deathless.
The continuity of this particular type of mortal reperformance is nowhere more
emphatically delineated than in the coda to Apollos interpretation. Not without your
children (*I5 [-#8 )4+3:& ,0;#& 45), he stipulates, but they will be lead by the first
and the third ones. The specification comes unexpectedly at the start of the new triad, but
even this belated position is perfectly in line with the import of this further detail of the
future reperformances of the wall. Aiakos and the snakes will find themselves re-
embodied in the subsequent generations of Aiakos progeny who will return to Troy and
do battle upon the wall that their ancestor helped to construct. They will fulfill the
metaphoric promise of the warrior-snakes, using their mortal bodies to reperform the
snakes leaps and deaths and cries. And through toppling the wall of their forebear, they
will repeat and reperform the moment that was already set out at the point of its
construction. Aiakos will eventually meet his end. So too his descendants will perish,
even as progressive generations of men re-fight the battles of their fathers.
89
But the wall,
as it continues to be destroyed and rebuilt, will always provide a locus for the
reperformance of their script and hence for their re-embodiment in a new generation of
re-enactors.
In closing his narrative, Pindar gives one final nod to his Homeric model,
demonstrating his deference to and appreciation of the text that he is, in some sense,
reperforming. Adopting the proleptic stance of Homers book twelve narration, Pindar
negotiates the transition from mythical past to poetic present by noting the exceptional
nature of Aiakos good fortune: -#8)&E& 3' (& @&;8c)*1' e,*& Q,,#-41 *I30& (an
equal joy will never be had again by mortal men) (52). The simple future tense of the

88
I paraphrase Porter (2011) p. 31. It is unclear whether Porter refers in this description to
Homers original intention or the interpretation of his later readers. I borrow his words in the
spirit of the latter.
89
Huxley (1975) p. 27-8.
217
verb essetai positions this future within the here and now, in the poetic present, rather
than in a distant past of the myth just recounted. Although it is hardly unusual for Pindar
to look forward beyond the temporal limits of his poem, such gestures are most
commonly found within the laudatory or poetically self-reflective passages of his works.
He rarely employs a proleptic voice with a clear a connection to the mythical past and the
uncommon gesture permits him to mirror Homers temporal stance, not by creating a
sense of unexpected proximity to the audience, as Homer does, but by bringing the
mythical past into an unfamiliar bond with his poetic present.
90
The moment establishes
his feeling of kinship with the epic poet of long ago, with whom he communes through
his own poetic reperformance.
Within the laudatory frame of the poem, the wall finds resonance with the island of
Aegina which stands like a fixed and immoveable column in the sea (25-30). The island
is, of course, the home of Aiakos and also of the victor, whose many family members
appear in great number throughout the poems opening and closing stanzas. The island is
the script of the Blepsiads, who with each victory offer an embodied reperformance when
they declare long-oared Aegina to be their homeland ((P0&#)# 584-0:& / )="t
3*"1JA8#-%*& e91&4& )=-84& 19-20). Like Aiakos, the Blepsiad clan breathes their
strength into new bodies across the generations (%0&*' / 9A84*' @&-+)4"*& 70-1 ), re-
embodying each other as they prove their strength in athletic competition. The string of
family victories, each new one reperforming the deeds of the last, brings a kind of
immortality as well crossing into the underworld where the dead can learn of the glory
of the living (54-4586)-#1 3' *I 5$&1' ,?99$&:& 5#3&7& J=81&. 80).
91
Their script,
like Aiakos and Pindars, is learned through corporeal experience,
92
a reperformance
brought to life through the living body of each man who takes it up.

90
We may think of the quotation of Adrastus in direct speech in O.6, discussed above at pp. 44-5,
99-100.
91
Segal (1985a) pp. 209-11.
92
Lines 59-65: -E 313=P4,;41 30 -*1 / #n3$-1 x-#8*& [9&:%*& 3C -E %R )8*%4;#K& /
5*?>$-#841 978 @)#18=-:& >80&#'. / 5#K&4 3C 5#K&*' & #e)*1 / Q894 )#84+-#8*& ["":&,
-+' -8$)*' [&384 )8*F=,#1 / (P #8D& @0;":& %0""*&-4 )*;#1&*-=-4& 3$P4& >08#1&.
218
CHAPTER 5 GHOSTS: PERSAI, PYTHIAN 8

We have now explored how Pindar and Aeschylus envisioned their scriptory poems as
tools for reperformance and how they imagined that reperformance in terms of the
embodied mimesis of living agents. Throughout our discussions, the figure of the poet
has featured as a critical element within the complex network of scriptory transformation.
The idea of the tool, as exemplified by Bellerophons bridle and Eteocles shields, asks us
to imagine the mediation of scriptory poetics as an operation that is shared between a
reperformer and the original author of the work. Similarly, the embodied mutations of the
scriptory snake, reflected in Orestes deceptions and Aiakos portent, look not only to the
physically present reperformer, but also to the absent author who enabled the actors
mimesis. In our efforts to untangle the complex workings of these scriptory structures,
the shadowy figure of the poet has come in and out of view it is now time to turn our
attention fully to the makers of scripted song.
The idea of an author is a persistent and inescapable element of any scriptory
structure. Yet within the scriptory framework of Pindars and Aeschylus compositions,
the voice of the poet does not emerge from the same place or in the same manner as that
of his embodied reperformers, nor is his presence wholly absorbed by the mediating
function of the tool. The scriptory poet must in a basic sense remain separate from his
creation; indeed, the very possibility of a scriptory poetics is predicated on the relative
detachment of the work from its author. It is the distance which separates the poet from
the work he has crafted that makes possible the structures characteristic spatio-temporal
mobility. The poet is thus at once present and absent within his scriptory creation. He
inhabits his work, but as part of its past rather than of its reperformative future. His words
are carried forward, but the poet himself is left behind. And yet, it is clear that the poet
imparts more than his words when he entrusts his composition to the future. His scriptory
composition also carries with it something of the poets own voice as it travels through
the permutations of its reperformative future. Ghost-like, the poet haunts his creations as
they find new voices and bodies across time and space. And accordingly it is in the figure
of the ghost that we must look for the poets of our scripted songs.
219
Encounters with ghosts are nothing new within the poetry of Pindar and Aeschylus.
Narratives of katabasis, a typical element of Indo-European and Near Eastern myth, can
be found throughout archaic Greek poetry.
"
Most famously, Homer recounts Odysseus
journey into the underworld in search of Tiresias, but we also know that there were poetic
traditions relating the katabases of Heracles, Theseus, and, most importantly for this
study, Orpheus. In addition to mortals descents into the underworld, ghosts sometimes
arise from below the earth to address the living, as does Patroclus appearing to Achilles
in a dream at the beginning of Iliad 23. The exceptional nature of such encounters
between the dead and the living is a characteristic that remains constant,
#
but our
discussion must also take note of the significant changes that such traditional mythical
tropes had undergone in the centuries separating Homers compositions from those of
Pindar and Aeschylus. By the end of the sixth century, not only had the conditions for
poetic performance changed, the rising popularity of hero cults, mystery religions, and
the occult had also transformed Greek thinking about the role played by the dead in the
life of the living.
$

The early history of what later antiquity refers to as Orphism or the Mysteries is
difficult to assess with any certainty, but it is evident that by the end of the sixth century
the nebulously defined religious ideas generally associated with mystery religion had
gained an important foothold throughout the Greek world. Whatever the details of
individual cultic practice and belief and it is clear that there was great variation
throughout the Mediterranean
%
this new thinking about the form and meaning of death
clearly influenced the compositional choices of Pindar and Aeschylus.
&
But it is
important to distinguish between linguistic and thematic resonances and the somewhat
thornier question of actual adherence to or participation in these rites. Neither Pindar nor
Aeschylus presents a coherent vision of the afterlife, and any passage adduced in favor of

"
Edmonds (2004) pp. 13-5 with bibliography.
#
Rose (1950) p. 258.
$
Richardson (1985), Morris (1989), Johnston (1999) pp. 1-81.
%
For discussion, see Burkert (1985) pp. 276-8, Morris (1989), Burkert (1990), Johnston (1999).
&
On Pindar, see Rose (1936), Solmsen (1968), Lloyd-Jones (1984), Nisetich (1988), Garner
(1992), Faraone (1993), Johnston (1995), Holzhausen (2004), Currie (2005), Bremmer (2006),
Grethlein (2010) pp. 29-46. On Aeschylus Faraone (1985), Bowie (1993b), Seaford (2003),
Parker (2009), Widzisz (2010).
220
a single account is almost invariably contradicted within the poets own work. Leaving
aside these vexing and inscrutable details, we can see that the broad interests and ideas of
mystery and hero cults supplied Pindar and Aeschylus with a critical model for thinking
about their own uniquely poetic concerns for the afterlife: the posthumous fate that they
would experience through their own scripted compositions. For our scriptory poets,
however, death was a state to be confronted even while living, since the departure of each
poetic composition into its reperformative future figuratively enacted the poets death
through his separation from his creation.
It is not surprising that the mysteries should have held a special attraction for poets
contemplating the idea of a poetic afterlife. The archetypal poet-hero, Orpheus, was one
of the most important mythical figures within the early development of mystery cult.
'

Orpheus owed his special status in eschatological belief to his successful katabasis and
his exceptional musical skill. These two attributes are often paired in the mythic tradition.
Thus Orpheus success in gaining Eurydices freedom from the underworld is said to
have been achieved through his poetic skill, charming the fearsome gods of the
underworld with the sweet sound of his lyre.
(
Aeschylus interest in the mythical poet is
demonstrated by the prominent role accorded to Orpheus in the Lycurgus trilogy, a work
which displayed the strong influence of the mysteries. Although little of the trilogy
remains, it seems that the eschatological facets of Orpheus character were an important
theme, especially of the second play, the Bassarides.
)
Eratosthenes tells us that the
tragedy dramatized Orpheus death at the hands of Dionysus following his katabasis,
*

and it is probable that the play explored or alluded to the death-like initiation rituals of
mystery cult.
"+
Pindars interest in Orpheus connections with mystic promises of an
afterlife is more difficult to trace. He is not mentioned amongst the heroes named in the
vision of metempsychosis presented in Olympian 2 (56-80), and the brief appearance of
Orpheus as one of the Argonauts in the fourth Pythian draws attention only to his poetic
skill, according him the exceptional status of aoidn patr. There is little in our extant

'
Johnston (1999) pp. 111-5, Hardie (2004).
(
The evidence is assembled by West (1983) p. 4, see also Brisson (1995).
)
West (1990) pp. 26-50
*
West (1990) pp. 34-6.
"+
West (1990) esp. pp. 38-42, Seaford (2005) pp. 604-5.
221
Pindaric texts that suggests Orpheus role in the life of the dead beyond a tantalizing
mention of golden-lyred Orpheus at the end of what remains to us of a fragmentary
threnos (fr. 128c SM).
""
Had more of the threnoi survived, it is likely that we would have
a far richer picture of Pindars engagement with this critical point of contact between
poetry and mystery cult in the early fifth century.
"#
As things now stand, we must be
content with the fragments that survive, just as we must with what remains of Aeschylus
Lycurgus trilogy, and try to piece together a sense of how the poets made use of this rich
tradition from other, more accessible vantage points.
Critical to understanding the broad meta-poetic valences of ghosts and necromancy in
our poets is Aeschylus Psychagogoi, the dramatic poets most developed representation
of the world of the dead. The play, which recasts the nekyia of Odyssey 11 for the tragic
stage, is generally presumed to have been the first of an Odyssean trilogy which included
Penelope (likely recounting Odysseus arrival back in Ithaca) and Ostologoi (concerning
the aftermath of the killing of the suitors), possibly concluding with a Circe as the
connected satyr-play.
"$
The name of the play, which does much to define the probable
identity of the Chorus, locates the dramatic action within the sphere of mystic
necromancy. The ritual invocation of the dead is partially preserved in the longest of the
extant fragments.
"%
It is likely that the incantation comprised a lengthy portion of the
play, as is the case with the kommos of the Choephoroi, and that the intensity and
virtuosity of the Choruss necromantic song (or songs) represented much of its theatrical
power.
"&


""
For an analysis of the epithet, see Cannat Fera (1990) p. 156.
"#
The most suggestive passages are ffr. 131bSM and 133SM. For discussion of their possible
significance, see Rose (1936), Cannat Fera (1990) pp. 185-7, Holzhausen (2004). Of greatest
interest to the present study is fr. 131bSM, in which Pindar speaks of the y:E& 3' Q-1 "#+)#-41
4nD&*' #e3:"*&. This connection between ghostly apparitions and the idea of an immortal soul
is then linked, in a most suggestive manner, to the dreams of living men, on which see Johnston
(2008) pp. 91-2.
"$
Gantz (1980) pp. 151-3, Katsouris (1982), Sommerstein (1996) pp. 348-53, Grossardt (2003).
"%
Fr. 273a Radt.
"&
Sommerstein (1996) p. 350. I believe that Sommerstein is too hasty in asserting that the central
focus of the drama on the Choruss invocation would have produced a play without much
movement or tension.
222
The passage invokes the gods of the underworld and Hermes Chthonios, the divine
protector of the lake beside which the necromancers practice their arts.
"'
The language
of the fragmentary prayer is in keeping with the mystic or magical tone one would expect
to find used in such ritual,
"(
and exhibits similarities both with the kommos of the
Choephoroi and with the invocations of the Persai to which we will soon turn. The
passage also emphasizes a critical element of Aeschylus adaptation of his epic model. In
their prayer, the Chorus ask that the spirits of the dead be sent up to them from under the
earth: j,%E& @&#K&41 )*-4%*V ,-*%=-:& [I ask you to] send up a swarm from the
mouths of the river [sc. Styx] (fr. 273a10 Radt). Whereas the Homeric Odysseus must
descend into the underworld, Aeschylus allows the spirits of the dead to be summoned
back into the light and onto the tragic stage.
")
The physical journey of the Homeric
Odysseus is replaced by the Choruss verbal incantation. In Odyssey 11, Odysseus
conducts his elaborate sacrifices to the dead in silence (11.24-50), now it is the brilliant
song of the Chorus that heralds the mystic encounter between living and dead.
The central motivation of the play, like that of the Homeric nekyia, is to permit
Odysseus to hear Tiresias prophesy his future.
"*
Part of the speech is preserved as
fragment 275 Radt:
(8:31E' 978 Hp$;#& )*-c%#&*'
&;L ,# )"AP#1 &O36*' J4"c%4,1&
(5 -*V3' [54&;4 )*&-+*? F*,5A%4-*'
,Ap#1 )4"41E& 308%4 54W -81J*88?0'

For a heron, flying over head, will open its bowels and strike you with dung from
which the spine of a sea creature will rot your aged skin and hairless [scalp?]

Although the bestial and scatological content of the fragment might at first appear comic
in tone, it is perhaps better understood within the context of the more earthly elements of

"'
Fr. 273.1 Radt. On the location, see Lloyd-Jones (1981) p. 22.
"(
But see the discussion of Henrichs (1991).
")
Cousin (2005).
"*
It has been suggested that other ghosts were also brought onto the stage, in the model of
Odysseus many encounters in Odyssey 11. Sommerstein (1996) p. 349-50, Bardel (2005) p. 91.
This claim is supported by the Choruss call for the swarm (j,%E&) to be sent up from Hades, but
there is little other evidence beyond inference from the Homeric model.
223
mystery ritual.
#+
The details of the event described remain somewhat obscure,
#"
but the
passage was compelling enough to its ancient interpreters to be adapted to describe the
miraculous nature of Aeschylus own death.
##
Certainly one can imagine how the old age
and repellent physical deterioration that Tiresias prophesies might stand in contrast to
subsequent promises of a better fate that awaits Odysseus in his afterlife. Furthermore,
even the limited information that survives demonstrates that the prophecy looks forward
beyond the scope of the trilogy, foretelling a death that will not otherwise be represented
within the dramatic action. As such, the Aeschylean scene adheres to the structure of its
Homeric precedent. Within the Odyssey, Tiresias is accorded a special role as mantis and
voice from the underworld. His prophetic instructions guide Odysseus through the
subsequent trials of his nostos, thus placing him in a position of near correspondence to
the Muse of the epic poet through his knowledge of the full scope of the heros journey
from a special vantage point outside of the constraints of time. Moreover, the final details
of the Homeric Tiresias speech elucidate the inland journey that awaits Odysseus after
his return to Ithaca has been completed, an enigmatic future that lies outside the
boundaries of Homers epic. It is this detail in particular that establishes Tiresias special
authority within the epic and serves to assimilate his character to that of the poet
himself.
#$
In adopting this metapoetic quality for his own representation of the seer,
Aeschylus demonstrates his appreciation for Homers authorial self-representation by
adapting the analogy to fit his own scriptory concerns. Now, rather than seek out the
voice of epic totality amongst the shades of the underworld, the figure of the author is

#+
It seems that some mystery cults used mud and filth in purification rituals as attested by
Demosthenes (18.259). The Aeschylean passage perhaps also alludes to claims that the
uninitiated would lie in filth after death, Edmonds (2004) pp. 84-5, cf. Brown (1991), Bowie
(1993a) pp. 234-44.
#"
The detail may be an attempt to reconcile the two contradictory traditions of Odysseus death:
the peaceful, inland old age promised by Tiresias in the Odyssey and the marine-themed death
from the sea at the hands of his son, Telegonus. On the opposition, see Hansen (1977). There
are potential connections with medical/magical use of excrement as a fertility balm, on which see
von Staden (1992).
##
Hadjicosti (2005).
#$
Ford (1992) p. 48 n.92, pp. 185-9.
224
conjured onto the stage in order to perform the role of the poet whose ghostly presence
provides the unifying structure for the many voices of his scripted drama.
#%

The Homeric allusion that underpins the Psychagogoi reminds us of the key role that
the epic poet played in framing the idea of scriptory poetics for both Pindar and
Aeschylus. Homer, whose own voice, as we saw in chapter two, is brought back from the
dead through the allusive quotations of fifth-century poets,
#&
serves as the model for the
kinds of ghostly apparitions that they envision in their own scriptory future. The mimetic
reperformance of the dead poet conjures his presence within the work of his successors,
bringing his spirit back into the world of the living. This desire to raise the dead once
more into the light is equally evident throughout Pindars work. For although Pindar at
times claims that his songs descend into the underworld, to inform the spirits of the dead
of the accomplishments of the living, the journey is always undertaken by a surrogate, not
by the poet himself.
#'
Pindar is concerned with remaining above the earth. His scriptory
poetics enable him to remain abaptistos, as he puts it in the cork simile, uncovered by the
shroud of death. Homer is the crucial model for both our poets, but Pindars most lucid
representation of the spectral mechanics of the poetic afterlife is in fact found in an
encounter with another poet of the past. It is the ghost of Archilochus, whose appearance
to Pindar is described in the second Pythian, in the stanza before his attention is turned to
the scriptory function of the cork, who reveals the odd character of the poets life after
death (54-6):
#i3*& 978 j57' (v& -7 )$""' (& @%4J4&+t
p*9#8E& U8J+"*J*& F48?"$9*1' QJ;#,1&
)141&$%#&*&

Standing at a distance I saw the slanderous Archilochus in great difficulty, grown
fat on his bitterly spoken enmities.


#%
A similar authorial function is attributed to the ghost of Klytemnestra, whose appearance at the
beginning of the Eumenides serves to orchestrate the furies fearful binding song. Prins (1991).
#&
See below, pp. 95-117.
#'
Segal (1985a). We may contrast the vision of song in the underworld represented in the new
Sappho, on which see Hardie (2005).
225
The language of the passage points to Archilochus fame as an iambic poet,
#(
but we
know from elsewhere that Pindar also considered him to be an important influence in the
realm of epinician.
#)
More important than such generic concerns is the amachania in
which Pindar claims the dead poet finds himself. Unlike Pindar who has discovered the
scriptory cork, the mechan through which he will escape the gloom of death,
Archilochus struggles to reveal himself, and remains at a distance despite the fame of his
song. As the subsequent discussion of Radamanthus makes clear, Pindars thoughts are
guided by the kind of immortality promised by the mysteries. It is not enough for ones
name to live on, the poet must know how to arise into the light through the reperformance
of his compositions.

1. THE FUTURE OF THE DEAD
The Persai is unique among the extant dramas of Aeschylus as both the only play that
was not originally part of a connected trilogy and the single known example in his corpus
to take on a subject of contemporary, rather than mythical, history.
#*
As such it presents a
particularly charged expression of the playwrights notion of the distinctive qualities of
dramatic time, and of the scripted poetics from which his plays emerge. What is more, the
action of the play, revolving around the central scene of the invocation and ultimate
appearance of the ghost of the dead king Darius, provides us with our most vivid and
concentrated view of Aeschylean necromancy and its relationship to the special spatio-
temporal nature of the poetic script.
Set in the Persian capital at Sousa, the play establishes a structure of spatio-temporal
juxtapositions that informs every aspect of the drama.
$+
As the Persian court awaits news
of the military expedition, the Greek audience is able to view itself from the outside. The
play inverts the space of its performance, transposing the stage into the distant world of
the enemy and renders Greece a vague and foreign land. Even before the action begins,

#(
Brown (2006), Steiner (forthcoming 2010).
#)
O.9.1-2: SE %C& U8J1"$J*? %0"*' / >:&<#& T"?%)+t, 54""+&15*' ~ -81)"$*' 5#J"43c'
#*
Although unusual, contemporary events were not entirely excluded from tragedy in the
beginning of the fifth century. In addition to the Persai, we have evidence of contemporary
themes as the subject of at least two plays by Phrynichus. On the general compatibility of mythic
and historical themes within the tragic context, see Hall (1989) pp. 62-76, Grethlein (2010) p. 74.
$+
Jouanna (2009), Grethlein (2010) p. 75.
226
the hic et nunc of the performance is a meditation on absence and presence that exults in
the possibilities of the dramatic imagination. This core paradox is exploited and
intensified by the dramatic structure of the play, which is organized around iterations of a
basic model of the anticipation and realization of return from afar.
$"
These moments
reenact and reflect upon the fundamental spatio-temporal tension of the drama, placing
the question of the stage on the stage in the form of actors who bridge the distance
between absence and presence. The basic problematic of the plays hic et nunc is thus
renewed throughout the drama as the two worlds of its performance are made to
encounter each other again and again. We meet the longed-for messenger bearing news
from the West, whose ability to convey the news of distant events to the anxious Sousans
comprises the plays first extended episode. So too Xerxes, whose ignoble return from
Greece completes the action of the drama. At the heart of the play Darius, returned from
an even greater remove, stands before the Persians in ghostly splendor. The apparition of
the dead king creates a specially charged rift in the spatio-temporal fabric of the play. His
hic et nunc presence brings the underworld to the stage and, as with the inverted nekyia
of the Psychagogoi, situates the past and future in the unmediated present of the drama.
An appreciation for the spectacular quality of Darius appearance onstage is built into
the language of the scene.
$#
An immeasurable distance normally separates the dead
Darius from the living land of Sousa, whose very soil is exalted by the possession of his
body. To bring their dead king into view, the Chorus deploy all of their skill in crafting
their prayers. Their invocations, directed piously to the gods of the underworld and to the
earth itself, are marked by powerful, ritually evocative repetitions and emphatic
imperatives.
$$
The Chorus must labor to bring the dead back into the light, an effort that,
as the kommos of the Choephoroi shows, is far from certain of success.
$%
The Choruss
imprecations are not addressed to the gods alone; they must also be heard by Darius. In
contrast to the gods, the dead king does not have ready access to the world above and the

$"
Taplin (1977), esp. pp. 124-7.
$#
Sad (2007) p. 75, Griffith (2007) pp. 119-20, Grethlein (2007) p. 382.
$$
The use of repetition, mainly anaphora, is marked beginning at strophe F. Imperatives run
throughout, and are incorporated into the repetition through the refrain at the end of strophe and
antistrophe 9: F=,5# )=-#8 [545# B481=&, *e. (662 = 671).
$%
Taplin (1977) pp. 114-9.
227
Chorus cannot be certain that their prayers have reached his ears: &08;#& 84 5"6#1
%*?; Does he hear me, I wonder, from below? (639).
$&

The Chorus have not labored in vain. Darius heeds their calls from his seat in the
underworld and undertakes to return to Sousa in answer to their pleas. Upon his
appearance, Darius himself draws attention to the exertion and acute emotion of the
Chorus in their prayers for his return. The king offers his own account of the prayers that
they have just performed, noting the effort of both Atossa and the old men that has
gone into the realization of his return. The dead king tells of how he trembled at the sight
of his wife pouring libations at his tomb, and how he heard the piteous laments of the
Chorus calling for his return (682-8).
$'

The combined efforts of Atossa, the Chorus, and the groaning earth itself have carried
word of Sousas misfortune to Darius in the underworld. Yet it is his own labor in
returning his spirit to the light (Q&#8;#& p?JR& (' >D', 630) that takes pride of place at
the culmination of Darius account (658-92):
(,-W 3' *I5 #I0P*3*&
["":' -# )=&-:', J*n 54-7 J;*&E' ;#*W
"4F#K& @%#+&*?' #n,W& a %#;10&41. 690
N%:' 3' (5#+&*1' (&3?&4,-#6,4' (9v
5:

There is no easy exit [from the underworld] by any means; the gods below the
earth more readily accept those arriving than let them depart again. But
nevertheless, being honored amongst them, I have come.

The living have made their powerful imprecations, but in order to fulfill their prayers the
ghost must endeavor to make the difficult escape from the confines of Hades. His
departure from the realm of the dead reverses the natural order. Men enter the underworld
without difficulty, but the gods do not readily let them emerge again into the light. That
Darius has been able to do so is, as we will see, a testament to his power, a mark of his

$&
Griffith (2007) p. 119. The stanza is treated at length by Haldane (1972).
$'
The adjective used to describe the Choruss laments is p?J49:9$', a term which later came to
be used in a technical sense to describe the emotional effect of a dramatic performance on its
audience. Hunter (2009) p. 37. Although there is no evidence for such technical usage at the time
of Aeschylus composition, it is possible that such meta-theatrical resonances were already
beginning to emerge and further influencing the playwrights connection between necromancy
and poetic performance.
228
semi-divine status. The return of the king, uniting the structurally segregated worlds of
living and dead, is a disturbance of the natural fabric of time and space. His presence
casts the present into a ghostly relief, uniting spheres that should remain disparate and
unsettling the stability of the hic et nunc. The effort needed to achieve this extraordinary
condition is no small matter, and its accomplishment rests upon an unstable asymmetry
inherent in the encounter between worlds.
The fundamental dissonance of Darius presence in Sousa is revealed in the first
words spoken by the king. Addressing the Chorus of old men who have prayed for his
return, the ghost invokes the common status that he shared with the Persian elders while
still alive. He calls them age-mates ("150' ;' FO' (%{' 681),
$(
a designation which
elides the great chasm that now divides the lives of the living men of the Chorus from the
timeless death of the ghost before them. Darius may wish to look upon the Chorus of
elders as his erstwhile companions. For the Persian elders, however, the dead king is no
longer like them. He is at once a man and nothing like man. Neither wholly flesh nor
fully material, existing both inside and outside of mortal time, he is, in the words of the
Choruss incantatory prayer, a man and a grave, an thos hidden in an unknown form:
>+"*' @&A8, >+"*' J;*', >+"4 978 505#?;#& ^;O (647-8). When he appears before
them in the flesh, the Chorus find themselves at a loss. They can neither countenance to
look upon him or to address him in speech (694-6):
,0F*%41 %C& )8*,130,;41,
,0F*%41 3' @&-+4 "0P41,
,0;#& @8J4+L )#8W -=8F#1.

I am too awed to look upon you, too awed to speak back, past fear of you
surrounds me [even now].

The Choruss alienation from Darius, as he seeks to bring himself into dialogue with
them, is reflected in the formal structure of the scene. The excited rhythms of the
Choruss continued lyric expressions jar against the steady trimeters and tetrameters of

$(
The connection is strengthened by Darius first words, ,5C%R ,5C%G' "150' ;' FO' (%{' /
s08,41 9#841*+, which echo the Choruss own self-description at the opening of the play: S=3#
%C& s#8,D& -D& *nJ*%0&:& / ""=3' (' 4i4& ,5C%R #$I-N%$5 (1-2). Darius repeats his claim
that the Chorus are his age-mates later in the scene where it is paired with an explicit reference to
their shared experience in life: #] 978 ,4>D' -$3' e,-', (%*W P?&A"15#', / z)4&-#' Y%#K', *
58=-O -=3' Q,J*%#& (784-5).
229
the kings speech, a rhythmical mirror of the asymmetry of the exchange.
$)
Darius reacts
to the Choruss trepidation with frustration. It was, after all, the Chorus who prayed for
his return (697-9):
@""' ()#W 5=-:;#& ";*& ,*K' 9$*1' )#)#1,%0&*',
%A -1 %451,-{84 %V;*& @""7 ,6&-*%*& "09:&
#n)C 54W )0841&# )=&-4, -R& (%R& 4n3D %#;#+'.

Now that I have returned from the underworld in compliance with your laments,
speak quickly and tell me all; do not drag out our exchange you must put aside
your reverence of me.

The irony of Darius words, like that of Orestes speech to the incredulous Electra, is a
mark of the incompatible spatio-temporal understanding of the two figures. Darius,
whose power to transcend the boundaries of death has granted him a special insight into
the malleability of time and space, cannot comprehend the Choruss disorientation in
light of his wondrous feat. The Chorus, bound by the spatio-temporal limitations of the
hic et nunc, insistently refuse to address their prayed for interlocutor. Even after they
have been chastened by Darius, they continue in their frightened lyrics, offering a formal
response to their own baffled antistrophe rather than turning their speech towards the
king.
$*

The uncertainty expressed by the Chorus is not misplaced. Darius is a double figure
on the stage, both present and absent in his ghostly form. On the one hand, the dead king
is a fully embodied actor (in both senses of the word) and subject to the constraints of the
performative hic et nunc. His actions and speech are contingent upon the same spatio-
temporal conditions that apply within the drama, a fact reflected in his early admonitions
to the Chorus to hurry their speech lest they squander their time together (692-3, 698-9).
Yet, at the same time, Darius is not fully participant in the dramatic action. He stands
apart from the Chorus and Atossa, ignorant of their present concerns and unable to do
anything to alleviate them. This double nature invests the figure of Darius with a unique
status within the drama as a figure able to embody the spatio-temporal mobility of the
scripted drama within the confines of the hic et nunc. As such, his appearance represents

$)
The structure of the scene as a whole is discussed by Michelini (1982) pp. 31-40.
$*
3+*%41 %C& J48+,4,;41, / 3+*%41 3' @&-+4 >=,;41, / "0P4' 36,"#5-4 >+"*1,1& (700-2).
230
a moment of theatrical self-reflection facilitated by the ghostly figure who at once
embodies and enacts the paradox of scripted reperformance.
In a recent article on the paradoxical temporalities involved in Darius appearance,
Jonas Grethlein has argued that the apparition should be understood as a mise en abyme;
a moment which encapsulates the broader theatrical program of the play within a single
scene. For Grethlein, Darius is a representative of the plays own internal past and his
presence on the stage calls attention to how the drama as a whole reenacts events that
have already taken place.
%+
Put another way, Darius calls attention to the spatio-temporal
juxtapositions of the plays mimesis through the paradox of his spectral appearance on
the stage. He is a reflection of the entire work, a physical embodiment of the very idea of
tragic performance.
Grethlein turns his insight into Darius special position within the Persai towards an
examination of the plays idea of history, but his model is also well suited to
illuminating Aeschylus interest in the scriptory qualities of the play. For while Darius
does, in some respects, represent the vanished past of the Persians, his status outside of
the living world permits him a spatio-temporal mobility that is as readily located within
the future as in the past. This spatio-temporal transcendence is, however, marked by a
single limitation: although he is physically present, Darius cannot fully participate in the
action of the stage. As such the dead king's role within the Persai is more closely aligned
with the plays scriptory self-awareness than it is with its historical consciousness. The
ghostly Darius is a reflection of the spatio-temporal flux on which the hic et nunc of the
drama is founded. His spectral presence holds up a mirror to a pervasive absence at the
heart of the action: that of the works absent author. As an actor unable truly to share the
stage with the characters who have called him forth, Darius embodies the paradoxical
qualities of the ubiquitously absent poet. Like the playwright himself, who commands the
full range of the dramas spatio-temporal matrix but cannot himself fully enter the
performance that he has created, Darius appears onstage without inhabiting it.
The appearance of Darius ghost sparks a pointed engagement with the dramas own
scripted status. But this moment of mise en abyme is not an isolated event. The complex
conditions of the scriptory poets present absence are explored throughout the play, and

%+
Grethlein (2007) pp. 380-3.
231
the charged resonances of Darius arrival are anticipated in the scenes leading up to the
critical moment. First the Choruss laments and then, more insistently, the messengers
reports establish a grammar of absence and presence which situates the necromantic core
of the play within a broader mediation on the spatio-temporal properties of scripted
poetics. Both of these earlier scenes play with the potential of dramatic performance to
conjure voices from elsewhere. And each resonates with the model of scriptory absence
that Darius arrival throws into relief. While neither of the preceding scenes achieves the
fully embodied realization of the absent poet they prefigure, their more limited
figurations produce a sense of lingering absence within the play, a futile desire to bring
what is gone back into presence, that sheds light on the basic dynamic of scriptory
absence with which the play is concerned. Furthermore, the attempts of the Chorus and
messenger to verbally impersonate and import distant figures and voices into the hic et
nunc of the play stand in marked contrast with the full embodiment of Darius onstage.
The essential distinction illuminates both the power of the poets true voice and the
paradoxical nature of his presence within the play.
In each of these preparatory scenes, tropes of dictional manipulation allow for the
integration of what is distant into the dramatic hic et nunc. The Chorus play with the
power of their voice to reenact events from beyond the limits of the stage and, through
their own reperformance, to bring characters into view who are not, and will never be,
bodily present within the drama. Likewise the messenger effectively imports the bloody
clashes and terrible sufferings that have taken place on distant shores. His accounts of the
battle at Salamis and the long, hard retreat of the Persian troops transport the throngs of
soldiers across the seas which now separate the messenger from these earlier events.
%"

Key to the messengers role is his ability to convey the sounds and speech of the conflict.
His use of oratio recta, the only true instance in the play, brings not only the Persians but
also their Greek adversaries into the Persian citadel and onto the stage. The malleability
of space, time, and voice within the performative sphere will by now be familiar as a
hallmark of the poets concern with the nature of their scriptory poetics, but the Persai

%"
We may contrast the vivid battle description with the relative lack of battle narrative in the
Seven Against Thebes, where the representation of the battle is almost entirely displaced onto the
verbal conflict of the Redepaare. For discussion of the play, see above pp. 161-80.
232
offers a unique glimpse of the human aspect of this spatio-temporal fluidity. As the
necromantic core of the Persai reflects, it is the ability of men to bridge these distances
that is at the heart of the drama.
The parodos of the Chorus provides a particularly fine introduction to the nature of
the plays interest in the spatio-temporal character of scripted poetics. In the course of
their opening song, the Chorus adumbrate, but do not fully engage, the idea of bringing
absent figures into the drama through the mediating power of their bodies and voices. In
their anapaestic entry,
%#
the Chorus identify themselves as the appointed guardians of the
Persian riches, the only ones remaining in a land that has been emptied of its men.
%$
The
Chorus must stand in for those who are absent.
The Chorus present a catalogue of the generals in the Persian forces, tracing the
geography of the empire from their current location in Sousa to Egypt and Lydia in the
west and Babylon in the east. In the first of many allusions to Homer, the passage not
only mirrors the form of an epic catalogue but is permeated with language borrowed
from or highly reminiscent of hexameter formulae.
%%
Beyond structure and vocabulary,
the catalogue achieves a particularly epic feel through its retrospective account of the
marshaling of the forces. The Choruss vivid memory of the past event recalls the
anachrony of the Iliadic catalogue of ships by returning to the start of a conflict that the
poet has chosen to represent beginning in medias res.
%&
However, the scripted nature of
the Aeschylean Chorus allows the playwright to transform the temporal dissonance into a
meditation on reperformative absence. Unlike the Homeric narrator, who stands apart
from his subject, the Persai Chorus present a visual mirror of the mobilized troops as
they march into the orchestra to the martial beat of their anapaestic song.
%'
They are not
an exact match for the great warriors whom they name; they insist that they are awed by

%#
On the powerful effect created by the plays lack of a prologue, see Michelini (1982) pp. 77-8.
%$
Lines 1-2, 12-3, and 59-62. On the gender dynamics that run throughout the play, see Hall
(1989) pp. 95-6, Griffith (2007), McClure (2006).
%%
On the Homeric color and language see Sad (2007), Garner (1990) pp. 22-4, Grethlein (2010)
pp. 76-7.
%&
Sad (2007) pp. 79-84, Grethlein (2010) p. 77.
%'
Anapaests are regularly used in tragedy at the outset of the parodos, but the martial theme of
the Choruss song in the Persai would, I suggest, have re-activated the military overtones of the
anapaestic meter. On the traditional uses of anapaests, see West (1982) pp. 53-4.
233
the sight of the forces just as they will be later in the presence of Darius.
%(
In fact, it is
precisely the inescapable differences in age, role, and place that separate the Chorus
and the generals they describe that lends power to their performative surrogacy. The
Chorus are a substitute for the now absent host, an imperfect proxy that can nevertheless
bring the past into presence once again. The Chorus reperform the departure of the
Persian army as actors not fully identified with the roles that they portray. The fissure
between the two groups of men, the absent soldiers and their aged surrogates, points to
the potential limitations of scripted reperformance. The formative event, the true
encoding of the script, can never be directly experienced through future iterations. The
moment of creation is necessarily also the moment of departure.
The immensity of the distance, both spatial and temporal, between the hic et nunc of
the Chorus and the departure of the troops is beautifully expressed in the subtle metaphor
at the close of the anapaestic section of the parodos (59-64):
-*1$&3' [&;*' s#8,+3*' 4e4'
*eJ#-41 @&38D&,
*' )081 )<,4 J;v& U,1{-1'
;80p4,4 )$;L ,-0&#-41 %4"#8,
-*50#' -' ["*J*+ ;' Y%#8*"#93E&
-#+&*&-4 J8$&*& -8*%0*&-41.

Such a bloom of men has departed from the Persian land, [men] whom the whole
land of Asia nourished and now groans for with a terrible longing; parents and
wives shudder as the time stretches out day by day.

As Asia is emptied of men, the wives and mothers count the days and tremble at the time
as it stretches out between them and the distant men. The metaphoric use of the verb
tein accords an almost material quality to the notion of time, as if it had a physical
presence. Through the subtle play of language, the image of the mens absence is filtered
through a spatio-temporal lens which suggests that the recollection of their departure
should be understood in terms akin to that of the poetic script. The men of Asia, the
authors of their own martial expedition have left behind only the void of their departure.
This is what is left to be reperformed by those remaining in the Persian city. The creation

%(
>*F#8*W %C& n3#K& 3#1&*W 3C %=JO& / p?J{' #I-"A%*&1 3$Pb (27-8), >*F#87& p1&
)8*,130,;41. (48)
234
of their absence can be recalled, but in doing so, the mediating distance of the script that
permits this reperformance is also brought into view.
A similar engagement with the idea of scriptory absence emerges later in the parodos,
as the Chorus draw their account of the departure of the Persian force to a close.
%)
The
crossing of the Hellespont through the astonishing contrivance of the bridge of ships is
both a rupture with the land of Asia, the hic et nunc of the Chorus, and a yoking of the
disparate worlds.
%*
Yet it is not the host, as they maniacally endeavor to lash their cables
and fix fast the sea, who now make their way into the conjuring space of reperformance.
The action of the soldiers is now too distant, too essentially removed from the experience
of the Chorus to compel them to embody its reenactment. Instead, the Chorus turn their
gaze inward to consider their own reaction to the faraway events they are recounting.
The emotional response of the Chorus, as they begin to suspect the subtle hand of at
at work in the westward march of their army,
&+
is expressed as the fear arising in their
phrn. They feel a sense of foreboding as they imagine that the absent men may not
return. Their lament for the abandoned city is at once for the absence that they now feel
and for the greater one which they fear will come. The heightened emotion of the
Choruss song, marked by their exclamatory language, is mirrored in the rhythmical shift
of the ode, from the ionics that have predominated since the end of the anapaestic
introduction to the lecythia that will command the odes final stanzas. With this shift in
register the Chorus moves into more nakedly unmediated expression, and at the same
time the most pointed moment of scripted reperformance (115-25):
-4V-= %*1 %#"49J+-:& ,-8. 3. 115
>8R& @%6,,#-41 >$FL
/< s#8,15*V ,-84-#6%4-*'
-*V3# %R )$"1' )6;O-
-41, 50&4&38*& %09' [,-? u*?,+3*'

54W -E !1,,+:& )$"1,%' @&-. 3. 120
@&-+3*?)*& ,#-41,
/<, -*V-' Q)*' 9?&415*)"O-

%)
The focus on the marshalling of the army in the Persai parodos finds a parallel, to some
degree, in the narration of the events at Aulis in the parodos of the Agamemnon.
%*
-E& @%>+y#?5-*& (P4%#+p4' /@%>*-084' z"1*& / )8D&4 5*1&E& 4e4' (130-2).
&+
>1"$>8:& 978 )*-1,4+&*?,4 -E )8D-*& )48=9#1 / F8*-E& #n' [85?4' l-4, / -$;#& *I5
Q,-1& H)C8 ;&4- /-E& @"6P4&-4 >?9#K& (111-14).
235
;R' N%1"*' @)6:&,
F?,,+&*1' 3' (& )0)"*1' )0,b "45+'. 125

Thus does my black-robed heart rend me with fear Oa, the Persian forces May
the city not learn from this that the great citadel of Sousa is emptied of men.

And the Kissians will sing a response Oa the crowd of women calling out this
word as they tear their fine linen garments.

The formal relationship of the stanzas is highlighted by the extra-metrical responsion of
the cry of woe, oa. In the strophe it is the Choruss own grief and fear, rending their
phrenes as if in mourning,
&"
that produces the interjection. When it is repeated in the
antistrophe, the origin of the expression of grief is less clear. The second stanza of the
pair introduces the women of Kissia, who it is claimed will echo the Chorus in their
own song, matching grief with grief. The second exclamation, then, would seem to be
that of the women; the literal antidoupon epos that the Chorus themselves describe. The
description of the women neatly matches that which the Chorus apply to their own
emotional reaction. The figurative language of clothing and costumes, a pervasive theme
throughout the play,
&#
is transformed from the metaphoric black robe of the Choruss
mind (%#"49J+-:& >8R&) into the rich mantles of their phantasmagoric female
counterparts (F?,,+&*1' 3' (& )0)"*1'). The imagery interweaves the garments rent in
grief, and with it the voices of lamentation. The second cry veers towards oratio recta, as
the Chorus almost ventriloquise the womens sung response. Yet the true voice of the
women is held at bay, their echo imagined within an unspecified future. The Chorus
postpone the threnodic amoibaion, flirting with the idea of a sung exchange without
bringing it into full verbal presence.
The effect of this double identity of the Chorus in the opening scene is to focus our
attention fully on the question of embodied presence on the stage. The Chorus are there
themselves, but they are also able to summon shadowy figures from afar, figures whose
own absence becomes part of the Choruss bodily form.
As the Chorus play out these moments of scripted absence, they are themselves
suffering yet another absence, that of a messenger who will bring news of the Persian

&"
Garvie (2009) ad loc.
&#
Thalmann (1980), Sad (2007) pp. 90-2.
236
campaign against the Greeks. The vacancy they feel is not one of past departure, but of
anticipated return. From the opening of their song the Chorus signal this concern: 5*}-#
-1' [99#"*' *}-# -1' ))#d' / [,-? -E s#8,D& @>15&#K-41 No messenger or
horseman has arrived at the city of the Persians. (14-15) and it is against this backdrop
that the dictional play of their parodos must be set. The city awaits news of the fate of its
absent citizens. Indeed the action of the entire play can be said, to paraphrase Oliver
Taplin, to dramatize the anticipation of Xerxes wretched return. Yet unlike the
Agamemnon, which displays a similar anticipatory stance in the wake of an overseas
military expedition, the Persai is built solely around the idea of reversing the absence at
the core of the play.
&$
And since absence can only be remedied by presence, this
operation is a matter of literal return. Much is made of the elaborate mechanai which
have allowed the Persian army to make its way from Asia into Europe. Yet their return is
not aided by the cunning contrivance, nor is there a correspondingly ingenious device for
conveying news of the armys fate across the great distance that now separates them from
the city. Clytemnestras beacon lights brought a symbolon of the fall of Troy immediately
to Argos and established the symbolic structure of the Oresteia as a dance between the
concrete and the imaginary. In the Persai, men alone bear messages and must travel
distances to do so. It is only when a messenger has returned from Greece a place so
distant that the Queen is not certain of its location that those who remained behind in
Sousa can learn of their countrymens fate.
For the messenger, as for Darius, the return is an arduous one and he rejoices at his
fortune in reaching Sousa alive: 54I-E' 3' @0")-:' &$,-1%*& F"0): >=*'. And I
myself did not expect to look upon this homecoming day. (261) The expression is
superficially anodyne but takes on a weightier tone in light of the next visitor to the stage.
The difficulty of the armys return to Asia is a central element of the messengers report,
comprising the second longest speech of the scene. The travails of the defeated forces, as
they make their way slowly across the hostile land of Boeotia, Macedonia, and Thrace,
are evocatively narrated and the length and detail of the description draws an implicit
contrast with the ease of their outbound journey.
&%
But it is in his account of the battle

&$
The emptiness of Asia is a recurrent theme of the play; Harrison (2000) p. 71.
&%
Kitto (1961) p. 39, see also the discussion by Garvie (2009) pp. 218-9.
237
itself that the messenger offers the most complex picture of the distance that separates the
Persian troops from the stage and it will be this element of the messengers report that
most concerns us here.
Upon his arrival, the messenger immediately conveys the broad outlines of the
disaster to Atossa and the Chorus. The army has been destroyed, the great riches of Persia
wiped out in a single blow.
&&
When Atossa demands an account of the disaster from its
arch, the messenger commences an extended narrative of the events at Salamis, which
gives content and shape to the catalogue of the dead that he has already delivered. The
messenger derives much of his authority from his status as eyewitness to the battle and
his account is marked by highly vivid visual details.
&'
An equally, if not more significant
feature in establishing the messengers reliability is the powerful aural component of his
narration. A kind of dictional enargeia in which sounds, and ultimately oratio recta, add
a vivid presence to the account, the messengers sonic descriptions bring the battle into
the ears of his audience, both onstage and off-, as if the distant events were being
reperformed within his narrative.
The messengers account of the battle is from the outset a matter of speech. The entire
catastrophe was set off, the messenger reports, by a single man who came from the Greek
host to address Xerxes. His deceitful speech, recounted in oratio obliqua, is deemed so
powerful that the messenger attributes agency to an unidentified alastr or kakos
daimon.
&(
With the Persian king duped by the cunning words of the Greek envoy, the
messenger paints a picture of the sonic landscape as the battle inches closer. At daybreak,
the Persians realize that they have been outwitted and outmaneuvered. Before they can
catch sight of the Greek ships amassed against them, the sounds from the enemy line
reach their ears and strike fear in their hearts (388-98):
)8D-*& %C& ]FS #"I$!&) ""A&:& )=84
9&I,7!1' -^W897C-', _3K5&' 3' z%4
2'%7I:I$Q- &O,1c-13*' )0-84' 390
]FL >$F*' 3C )<,1 F48F=8*1' )48{&
9&c%O' @)*,>4"#K,1& *I 978 M' >?9`

&&
M' (& %1 )"O9` 54-0>;48-41 )*"d' / "F*', -E s#8,D& 3' [&;*' *eJ#-41 )#,$& (251-2).
&'
Barrett (1995) and Barrett (2002) chapter 1.
&(
8P#& %0&, 30,)*1&4, -*V )4&-E' 545*V / >4&#W' @"=,-:8 a 545E' 34+%:& )*;0&.
(353-4).
238
,$5\'' +W49'&0' ,#%&E& ""O&#' -$-#,
@""' (' %=JO& ~8%D&-#' #Ip6JL ;8=,#1
C:I,5=Q !' 20%S )=&-' (5#K&' ()0>"#9#&. 395
#I;d' 3C 5c)O' V&K5:!&) P?&#%F*"`
Q)41,4& z"%O& F86J1*& (5 5#"#6%4-*',
;*D' 3C )=&-#' ,4& (5>4&#K' n3#K&.

First the melodious racket of the Greeks sounded out around us with a peal, and
at the same time the high-pitched echo cried back from the islands cliffs. Fear
was in the heart of every Persian, and their wits were lost. The Greeks then sung
a holy paian, in no way planning to retreat, but rousing themselves for battle with
sturdy courage. And the trumpet lit up that whole place with its blast. And
straightway they struck the briny depths of their path with the stroke of their
plashing oars and, moving swiftly, they were all soon plain for us to see.

The density of sonic detail is remarkable, bringing the din of the naval preparations into
vivid reality on the stage. The sounds of the Greek troops as they move about the ships
rise up through the air and rebound off the rocky cliffs around them, the shrill cry of the
battle trumpet mixes with the prayers of the soldiers and the plash of their oars. Within
the messengers cacophonous account, the detail of the tumult echoing off the nearby
rocks is described with special care. The dense fabric of sounds arising from the Greek
ships is variously portrayed as raucous (J` 50"43*') and melodic (%*")O3E&) and
both aspects are reflected in the shouting (@&-O"="4P#), high-pitched (8;1*&) response
of the rocks. By enjambing the subject, ch, the poet presents an elegant formal mirror
of the sounds belated arrival.
&)

The complex sounds of the messengers speech also resonate with sounds from
beyond the immediate context and literal meaning of his words. These figurative echoes
situate the messengers aural portrait within a broader development of the theme of
absence and presence that is developed through the play. On the one hand, the martial
echoes harken back to the ventriloquised amoibaion of the parodos, where the Chorus
created a response for their cry of grief through their brief act of choral projection. Now
we hear the shouts of the Greeks rebounding from cliffs that will soon be filled with
Persian dead and the Choruss postponed lament finds its true echo in the messengers
double reperformance. Looking forward, the line-initial position of the enjambed ch
does more than call attention to the formal properties of the description, it presages the

&)
Garvie (2009) ad loc.
239
reverberating appearance of Darius who will soon be brought onto the stage in glorious
response to the Choruss pleas. The noun ch is phonetically reminiscent of the first-
person verb hk, a term that is regularly found in the same position in the trimeter.
Notably, within the Persai the form is only used by Darius, upon his return from the
underworld: N%:' 3' (5#+&*1' (&3?&4,-#6,4' (9v / 5: (691-2). But the line-initial
use is common in Aeschylean and tragic trimeters to signal the arrival of a new actor
onstage.
&*
So common is its use in tragedy, that the verb form takes on an almost generic
quality, a marker of the scriptory drama orchestrating the mimetic reperformance. But
here, as with the Chorus earlier, the arrival of the Greeks distant echo in Sousa does not
herald a new voice onstage; it is an old sound echoed once more in the messengers
reperformance. Darius stands apart from this idea of scripted belatedness, not an echo but
a hk, a real arrival from the world beyond the stage.
The polyphony of the messengers initial description is traced through his narrative.
Shouts and groans characterize his report of the entire confrontation.
'+
But the central
sonic detail is the messengers impersonation of the Greek battle-cry. For, when the ships
finally come into view, the sounds of the Greeks become correspondingly clearer and the
Persian observer is able to report hearing their exact words (401-5):
54W )48{& ~%*V 5"6#1&
)*""R& F*A& )4K3#' ""A&:&, e-#,
("#?;#8*V-# )4-8+3', ("#?;#8*V-# 3C
)4K34', 9?&4K54', ;#D& -# )4-8:& f3O,
;A54' -# )8*9$&:& &V& H)C8 )=&-:& @9c&.


&*
Notably, in Aeschylus, the verb is elsewhere employed to assert an actors presence in a
manner that similarly contrasts with a possible absence. Thus it is used by the messenger
introducing himself, and his eyewitness authority, to Eteocles in the Seven Against Thebes (40),
by Orestes upon his return to Argos at the beginning of the Choephoroi (3), and by Aigisthos,
emerging from the palace later in that same play (838). The verb also appears in the Agamemnon,
where it is employed by the Chorus as they turn their attention to Klytemnestra at the end of the
parodos (258) and in the Eumenides as Orestes supplicates Athena (236).
'+
Most subtly, the paian of the Greeks seems to invest the blows of battle with its musical
qualities. The verb pai, reminiscent of the noun paian/pain and at times a homophone of the
verb epaeid, is used four times throughout the narrative (396-7, 408-9, 415-6, 425-6). Each
instance repeats the line-initial position of )41<&' (>6%&*?& (393), and three out of the four are
paired with a specific sonic detail.
240
And it was possible at the same time to hear their loud shout: Sons of Greeks,
come, free your fatherland, free your children, your wives, the seats of your
paternal gods, and the graves of your ancestors! Now we fight for all!

The dissonance of this protreptic address to the Greek troops in the voice of the Persian
messenger who is himself in dialogue with the grieving Queen and Chorus of Persians is
a forceful dramatic move. The combination of two powerful dictional tropes, oratio recta
and apostrophe, has the effect not only of turning the messenger into a conduit for the
absent Greek troops, but of placing his interlocutors in the position of the enemy forces
who have just triumphed over their kinsmen. The comparative weakness of the Persian
response, given only the most cursory description by the messenger, highlights the vivid
presence that has been accorded to the voices of the Greeks: 54W %R& )48' Y%D&
s#8,+3*' 9"c,,O' $;*' H)O&-+4y#, 5*I50-' & %0""#1& @5%A. And on our side the
din of the Persian tongue responded, and it was no more time to delay. (406-7). The
ventriloquised exchange points to the absence that still underpins the messengers report.
The vivid presence of the distant and foreign Greek voices that he impersonates calls
attention to the gulf between the Sousan stage and the far-off battle. And even more
distant are the voices of those who have departed from the Persian capital.
'"
The men
whom the Persians long to hear can only reach the capital in a muted echo.
The lingering sense of absence in the messengers attempts to bring the distant battle
into the hic et nunc can be linked to the characterization of his report as a kind of fixed,
written text which he is bringing to light through his speech. At the outset, he offers to
unfurl the sufferings of the Persian troops as if unrolling a book in which their
tribulations had been fixed in writing: )<& @&4)-6P41 )=;*' (254).
'#
The metaphor is
repeated by the Queen nearly word for word in her response (294), placing clear
emphasis on the idea that his words not only spring from elsewhere, but rely on the fixity
of written mediation in order to be reperformed in Sousa.
'$
In line with this focus on

'"
On the possible political motivations of the messengers account, see Goldhill (1988a), Hall
(1996) 11-3, Harrison (2000) pp. 31-9.
'#
Cf. Hdt. 1.125 @&4)-6,,: -E F+F"1*&. Hall (1996), Garvie (2009) ad loc.
'$
Grethlein has rightly emphasized the importance of memory in the messenger scene, but the
repeated allusion to written documentation suggests that the act of memory is not here
synonymous with oral tradition, passed on by one person to another, as he claims. Grethlein
(2007) p. 370.
241
written commemoration, the catalogue of Persian dead which the Messenger then relates
demonstrates clear affinities to the Athenian casualty-list inscriptions of the time.
'%
That
the messengers version of the list is an emphatically performative and dialogic act,
wholly dependent on the bodily presence of the performer to recount each detail, does not
weaken this connection. Rather it reflects the scriptory perspective of the dramatic poet,
who does not see the written text as an object to be considered in and of itself, but as a
vital tool for reperformance, a task here taken up by the messenger. No great focus is
placed on these scriptory objects, as the concern of the drama is to explore the human
dimension of reperformance. But they lurk behind the messengers words, gesturing
towards a secondary level of absent otherness that will only be fully realized through
Darius arrival onstage.
The Homeric allusion embedded at the close of his battle description signals an
especially pointed connection between the messengers account and the poetics of
scripted reperformance. Regretting the incompleteness of his narrative, the messenger
expresses the impossibility of giving a full account of the disastrous battle (429-32):
545D& 3C )"{;*', *I3' & #n 305' ^%4-4
,-*1JO9*8*+O&, *I5 & (5)"A,41%+ ,*1. 430
#] 978 -$3' e,;1, %O3=%' Y%08t %1
)"{;*' -*,*?-=81;%*& @&;8c):& ;4&#K&.

The fullness of misfortunes, I could not tell of its whole extent even if I listed
events in order for ten straight days. But know this well: never has such a number
of men died on one single day.

The language is borrowed from the recusatio that introduces Homers catalogue of ships
(Il.2.488-90):
'&

)"O;d& 3' *I5 & (9v %?;A,*%41 *I3' /&*%A&:,
*I3' #e %*1 3054 %C& 9"D,,41, 3054 3C ,-$%4-' #i#&,
>:&R 3' [88O5-*', J="5#*& 30 %*1 -*8 (&#+O

The full account I could not speak nor name [them all], not if I had ten tongues
and ten mouths, and an unfading voice and heart of bronze within [my breast].


'%
Ebbott (2000).
'&
Barrett (1995) pp. 550-4. On the importance of the topos throughout the greco-roman poetic
tradition, see Hinds (1998) pp. 35-47.
242
Both speakers face the challenge of recounting an event of greater magnitude than they
can physically convey. But where the Homeric narrator expresses his limitations in terms
of his powers of speech his tongue, mouth, voice, and heart the Aeschylean
messenger focuses on the limited time allotted to him. The dramatic poet transforms the
ten tongues of Homers oral poetics into the ten days of the messengers scripted
reperformance. As Grethlein notes, it is a plausible approximation of the amount of time
needed for a full reperformance of a Homeric epic.
''
But tragedy, allotted only a single
day (Y%084 %+4), must contain multiple moments within its single performance. The
contrast points up the generic parameters which distinguish tragedy, and tragic
performances, from their epic predecessors. But the unmistakable formal difference of
the two genres also suggests a less clearly defined distance that separates the epic and
dramatic poets as they consider the problem of bringing the past to light. The concern
will be echoed by Darius when he urges the Chorus to speed their exchange (692, 698-9),
a marker of how the performative temporality of drama illustrated here by the allusive
engagement with the Homeric model structures the scriptory outlook of the play.
None of the elaborate play of time, space, and voice found in the Chorus or the
messenger is necessary with Darius. His very presence contains the spatio-temporal
paradox that these earlier scenes endeavor to elucidate. His alienation from the hic et
nunc is explicit. He knows nothing of the Persian conflict, save what he has learned from
watching the hordes of dead arrive in Hades (706-8). His ignorance of events is striking,
a perfect antithesis of the messengers astounding knowledge.
'(
What ill has befallen the
city, he asks his wife, and which of his sons now leads the army? What forces have been
lead against the Greeks, and how has the army made its way across to Europe? (715-37).
Darius arrival onstage entails the overt incorporation (indeed, the embodiment) of the
structural dynamics of absence and presence that have heretofore haunted the play and its
players. Now the intangible sense of absence has been given ghostly form on the stage,
and we are able to contemplate what it means to bring these two worlds into contact.
Darius stands, as the poet does, in an uneasy balance with the rest of the drama. He is
isolated even as he stands amidst his former countrymen and wife, and unable to find his

''
Grethlein (2007) p. 376.
'(
A different perspective on the relationship of the two figures is set out by Barrett (1995) p. 541.
243
way into the present. The configuration mirrors that of the scriptory poet in relation to his
work. No longer part of its reperformative present and future, the author of the play
cannot enter into true dialogue with the characters of his creation. Within this formal
dynamic, it is Darius identity, as former king and master of all Asia, that lends his
ghostly presence the certain power to captivate and command. Despite or perhaps
because of his displacement from the action of the stage, Darius regal voice possesses
a manifest authority that is unparalleled within the play.
')
Like the poet himself, Darius
distance from the world of the hic et nunc only increases his potency and royal dominion.
And although he stands outside of the present, he demonstrates his mastery over the
temporal and spatial spheres through his ability to see both past and future. The long
catalogue of Persian kings with which he begins his series of monologues reveals the
profound reach of the kings authority, tracing the source of his rule deep into the past
and ultimately to the beneficence of Zeus himself (759-65).
'*
And his insight into the
future sufferings of the Persians develops seamlessly into a much more localized
direction of the dramatic stage instructing Atossa to leave the proscenium and change
her costume
(+
that sets the global fate of the empire and the plays own stagecraft
equally under his control.
Darius return does not represent the absent presence of reperformance, in which the
hic et nunc actor tries to conjure what is distant into being once more, but the present
absence of the poet, whose voice permeates all but cannot himself take part in the vital
moment of his poems reperformance. The qualitative difference between his engagement
with the plays underlying interest in scriptory poetics is represented by his unique
antipathy towards Xerxes Hellespont bridge, expressed in the initial, tetrametric portion
of his speech. Upon learning that Xerxes had constructed the contrivance to cross from
Asia into Europe, Darius expresses grief at his sons imprudent decision (725). The king

')
Griffith (2007) p. 121.
'*
Griffith (2007) pp. 123-4.
(+
Lines 832-6. Atossas absence from the remainder of the play has posed something of a
conundrum for critics, cf. Dworacki (1979). Within this scriptory reading of the drama, her
absence can be understood as an aspect of the plays unseen action. Instructed by the poetically
potent Darius, her actions need not be completed on the stage any more than the events of
Tiresias prophecies must be fulfilled before our eyes. In both instances, the absent action signals
the power of the absent poet, who commands a scriptory world that transcends the limits of the
dramatic stage.
244
traces the Persians woes back to this single act, the yoking and enslavement of the
flowing waters of the straight.
So remarkable is Xerxes feat that, were it not for external corroboration, one might
almost imagine that Aeschylus invented the detail of the Hellespont bridge. As an
historical event, the construction of the bridge was an awe-inspiring endeavor, especially
given the technological limitations of the time. Nevertheless, the importance accorded to
the event within Aeschylus Persai is extreme even in the context of this disproportionate
accomplishment. The bridge is present in the imagination of the play from the start.
("
To
those left behind in Sousa, it is a wondrous device, binding the Persian troops to the
Asian land from which they have departed. The Chorus praise the cunning and
craftsmanship of the man who has bound the sea with laophoroi machanai (114), but
suggest that his ingenuity may not be sufficient to overcome the dolomtis apat of the
gods (115). Indeed, although the bridge is able to convey the army across the aqueous
boundary between the world of Asia and that of Europe beyond, it fails to maintain the
connection and cannot ensure the return of the men whose departure it hastened. Darius
condemnation of the bridge rests on his insight into the will of Zeus, who has prophesied
that the divine waters should not be mastered by mortal hands (745-8). Xerxes ignorance
of this edict has led him to act in contravention of the gods, who now thwart his endeavor
sending forth disasters as if from a flowing spring (742-3).
The somewhat surprising focus placed on the bridging of the Hellespont as the seed
of the Persian disaster offers a number of avenues for interpretation. The emphasis on
Xerxes hubris certainly reflects a political and ethnic bias of the Greek playwrights
characterization of his enemy; not even Xerxes own father can condone his outrageous
and sacrilegious behavior. But the rich and puzzling language of Darius speech may also
be understood in a different way: as a reflection on the scriptory themes that we have
been tracing through the play. As noted earlier, Aeschylus descriptions of the Hellespont
bridge link the device to the idea of the scriptory tool. The language of physical
mechanai, of binding, joining, and fixing fast, is applied to the device throughout the
play. In Darius formulation these attributes turn ominous.
(#
Xerxes enslaves and fetters

("
Hall (1996) p. 160.
(#
Garvie (2009) p. 295.
245
the waters, driven by madness to seek mastery over the sea (745-51). This nightmarish
image of the scriptory bridge is anticipated in the development of the drama by Atossas
especially vivid dream of her son holding the reigns of his unstable chariot (176-99). And
as in the queens vision, it is Xerxes inability to control his tool that turns the bridge
image from good to ill.
Darius presents his sons transgression as a kind of temporal dissonance.
Transforming the flow of the ford from land to sea, his hammers fashioning the waters
into a physically permanent tool, Xerxes has prematurely enacted a scripted future (739-
41):
>#V, -4J#K= 9' ";# J8O,%D& )8<P1', (' 3C )4K3' (%E&
#d' @)0,5Op#& -#"#?-R& ;#,>=-:& (9v 30 )*?
317 %458*V J8$&*? -=3' O}J*?& (5-#"#?-A,#1& ;#*6'

Alas, quickly has the accomplishment of the oracles come to pass; Zeus has
brought about the completion of his decrees through my son. I suppose that I
believed the gods would bring these things to completion far in the future.

Seen through the lens of scriptory poetics, Xerxes action is a reperformance, enacting the
long-standing (i.e. scripted) prophecy of the gods. Xerxes is but the instrument of Zeus,
who brings his prophecy about through the unsuspecting young king ((' 3C )4K3' (%E&).
But Xerxes does not know that he is reenacting a script that has already been fixed. The
insistence placed on the temporal dimension of the deed, an action that has come about
tacheia despite having been known dia makrou chronou, connects Xerxes ignorance to
his temporal impotence. As Darius later warns, the young king cannot stand outside of
time as the dead king does. Xerxes is still subject to the vicissitudes of the hic et nunc,
where the flow of time cannot be fixed: 5*I30): 545D& / 58O)W' g)#,-1&, @""' Q-'
(5)136#-41.
($
(814-5) The foundations of ills are not yet fixed, but still are fluid.
(%
The
construction of the bridge is a transgression of Xerxes role, an attempt to control the
divine mechanisms of scriptory poetics. It is as though the young king thinks himself a
poet, the forger of a script that will enable him to cross between worlds. But he does not

($
(5)136#-41 Schtz, (1,)413#6#-41 YO
ac
, (5)"1&;#6#-41 (melius fort. #n,)"1&;-) Tucker.
(%
The combination of metaphors of construction and watery flows is not, as Garvie states, an
incoherent image, but elegantly reprises the language of the Hellespont bridge. Garvie (2009) ad
loc.
246
possess the knowledge to manipulate time and place. Darius, from his vantage amongst
the dead, has long held the knowledge that might have saved his son from error. But even
he could not foresee when the reperformance of the divine prophecy would take place.
When the long-anticipated Xerxes finally appears onstage, he is chastened. Dressed in
rags, he is a pale imitation of his gloriously dead father.
(&
In his lamentations, the
defeated king offers a final perspective on the weight of his fathers absence (913-7):
"0"?-41 978 (%D& 9?+:& c%O.
-A&3' Y"15+4& (,13$&-' @,-D&,
#e;' >#"#&, #V, 5@%C %#-' @&38D&
-D& *nJ*%0&:&
;4&=-*? 54-7 %*K84 54"6p41.

The strength of my limbs has been loosed. And as I look upon the age of these
citizens, I wish, o Zeus that the lot of death had covered me as well alongside
those departed men.

Xerxes words echo the Homeric formula of death in battle, "V,# 3C 9?K4,
('
equating his
defeat with the death that he longs to have suffered.
((
But this living death does not
enable Xerxes to achieve the timeless power of his ghostly father. His arrival inaugurates
the extended threnodic amoibaion which concludes the drama. The humbled king and
Chorus enumerate the dead who have been lost in the expedition against the Greeks, but
their words have no power to conjure the spirits back into sight. The dead have departed
from the stage and all that remains is a reperformance of their absence.

2. A DREAM OF A SHADE
If the presence of Darius unsettles the dramatic hic et nunc of Aeschylus Persai by
requiring the plays actors to confront their own belated status as agents reperforming
actions scripted for them in another time and place, Pindars Eighth Pythian asks us to
examine this paradox of reperformance from the opposite perspective, seeing the poet
himself displaced by the shifting spatio-temporal status of the work of which he is the

(&
Taplin (1977) p. 126, Michelini (1982) pp. 73-4, Griffith (2007), Sad (2007) p. 90, Deforge
(2008).
('
Variations, including "6&-* 3C 9?K4, and H)0"?,# 3C 9?K4, are also regularly found. In total
the formula and its variants appear 24 times in the Iliad.
((
Deforge (2008).
247
author. In the tragic composition, the impossibility of the poets presence within the
drama gives rise to the ghostly apparition whose paradoxically present absence allows the
poet to contemplate his own displacement from the stage. In Pindars non-dramatic
poems, representing the voice of the poet within his own work does not pose such formal
challenges. But the lack of a generic obstacle does not mean that the lyric poet is
untroubled by the problematic process of appearing within his scriptory creations. In fact,
Pindars ready use of the poetic first person reveals an even greater degree of interest in
mapping the role that scriptory poetics has created for the poet. With a polyphonic future
of reperformance already inscribed in his works from the moment of composition, the
poet must transform his relationship to his song in order to accommodate the conditions
of its scriptory future. The eighth Pythian ode offers a paradigmatic vision of the
mediated polyphony of reperformance, drawing on each of the essential figurative
representations of scriptory poetics the tool, the snake, and the ghost as well as the
dictional tropes of oratio recta and apostrophe in order to present a complex composite
image of the poets new conception of his craft. The composite scene interweaves all of
the elements which we have heretofore examined individually, demonstrating not only
Pindars singular ability to condense the manifold complexities of his art into a single,
reverberating image, but the underlying unity of the idea of a scriptory poetics which
binds each of these elements together.
The ode celebrates the victory of yet another Aeginetan youth, Aristomenes,
()
who
won the boxing competition in the Pythian games of 446 BC.
(*
The poet, however,
chooses to forgo singing the rich tales of the islands many mythical scions, asserting that
in his askolia he will keep his attention on the present (25-34):
)*""*K,1 %C& 978 @#+3#-41
&154>$8*1' (& @0;"*1' ;80p41,4 54W ;*4K'
H)#8-=-*?' 8:4' (& %=J41'
-7 3C 54W @&38=,1& (%)80)#1.
#n%W 3' [,J*"*' @&4;0%#&
)<,4& %45849*8+4& 30

()
On the prevalence of Aeginetan victors within our extant Pindaric corpus, see the contributions
to Fearn (2011).
(*
If the dating of the poem to 446 BC is correct, the ode would be our latest extant work by the
poet, perhaps accounting for the increased complexity of his figurations of scriptory poetics.
248
"68t -# 54W >;09%4-1 %4";45,
%R 5$8*' (";v& 5&+,b. -E 3' (& )*,+ %*1 -8=J*&
e-: -#E& J80*', )4K, &#c-4-*& 54"D&,
(% )*-4&E& @%>W %4J4&.

[The land of Aegina] is sung by many [poets] for raising heroes preeminent in
games that bring victory and in swift combat. She is conspicuous amongst men for
these accomplishments. But I have not leisure to set out the whole long tale with
my gentle-voiced lyre, lest bristling surfeit appear. I must run the race before me
and let your most recent accomplishment, child, soar upon my winged device.

The passage imagines the songs of the past, sung by many but now silenced in Pindars
urgency to remain in the present and not to lend his gentle lyre to the cumbersome and
inexaustible (%45849*8+4&) voices of the past. Rather his skill (%4J4&) will give wing
to the victors most recent (&#c-4-*&) accomplishments. The claim, anchored by the
poets apostrophic address to his subject, is unusual in Pindars work. Not all of Pindars
epinician odes contain a mythical narrative, nor does he ever feel constrained to recount
the entirety of a mythical tale. But the poets explicit rejection of the past in favor of the
present is unusual, and reflects the odes heightened interest in the complex spatio-
temporal dynamics of scripted reperformance.
)+

So ends the second antistrophe, but the poets promise is not kept. No sooner has the
epode begun than the song begins to inch into the past, recalling the earlier victories of
Aristomenes clan the wrestling prowess of his maternal uncles, Theognetos and
Kleitomachos as templates for the feat of the young laudandus. As if lured into the very
act of retrospective comparison which he had expressly renounced, Pindar moves subtly
into a mythical account, though the tale is drawn from the Theban cycle the myths of
Pindars own patria not the exploits of the Aeginetan Aiakidai (38-42):
)"

4}P:& 3C )=-84& |#13?"13<& "$9*& >08#1',
-E& N&)#8 )*-' Tq5"0*' )4K' (& j)-4)6"*1' n3c&
?*d' rAF41' 4n&+P4-* )48%0&*&-4' 4nJ%, 40
~)$-' @)' l89#*' ^"?;*&
3#?-084& ~3E& )+9*&*1.


)+
Similarly Martin notes how the poems dynamic temporal and physical landscape pushes the
limits of choral poetic art, [and] demands that we, in turn, expand our critical horizons to find
new ways to understand and describe its ancient artistry. Martin (2004) p. 343.
)"
On the choice of myth, see Gentili and Bernardini (1995) p. 573 and Burnett (2005) pp. 230-1.
249
Increasing the Meidylid line, you bear the speech which the son of Oikles once
riddled as he looked upon the sons standing by their spears in seven-gated
Thebes, at that time when the Epigonoi traveled the way from Argos a second
time.

At first the transition seems relatively unexceptional. Through his exaltation of the family
line, Aristomenes has earned the praise that Amphiaraos once offered to his own son; that
he reflected the noble character of his father. Just as he did in Olympian 6 when quoting
Adrastos words of praise for the dead Amphiaraos a scene taken from the same Theban
cycle
)#
the poet cites the doubly applicable speech as the hinge between worlds, since it
is equally suited to the hic et nunc as to the past event for which it was first spoken. In the
now familiar mode of his oratio recta, Pindar steps into the role of Amphiaraos, taking up
the seers words as his own and fusing their voices in a single utterance.
The theme of generational continuity, connection between family past and present, is
central to the correspondence.
)$
But the fusion of voice through the poets oratio recta
adds an additional layer of interaction that complicates the levels of correspondence.
Although the quotation is not directly imported from the hexameter, as it was in
Olympian 6, its allusive force is nonetheless made clear by the poets reference to the
deuteran hodon traveled by the Epigonoi. The terminology of the epic hodos, or path of
song, was a well established trope from the earliest known examples of Greek poetry and
is deployed here to signal Pindars conscious appropriation of an epic precedent.
)%
Just as
the late-born warriors follow in the tracks of their fathers, Pindar himself retraces the epic
poets path of song.
)&
The self-reflective expression takes on an added significance in
light of the poets earlier rejection of the songs of Aegina that have been sung by many
(25-8). Now, by contrast, he is willing to travel the paths of his poetic predecessors,
taking up a tale from the Thebaid to illuminate the glory of his laudandus. Nor is this epic
borrowing a low-key affair. Pindar does not simply adapt the subject matter of those
earlier songs, rather he uses the trope of direct speech to call attention to his echo of the

)#
In many ways, Adrastus speech in O.6 functions as an inverse model for that of Amphiaraos in
P.8.
)$
On the importance of mantic genealogies, see Johnston (2008) p. 113.
)%
On paths of song, Becker (1937), Ford (1992) pp. 41-8. See also my discussion above, pp. 104-
7.
)&
On the many journeys figured in the ode, see Martin (2004) pp. 352-3.
250
past poets voice.
)'
This reperformance of an epic predecessor extends the question of
generational continuity with which the passage is concerned into the ambit of the poet.
Pindars imitative speech turns the quotation into a signal of yet another instance of
generational continuity, that between Pindar and his epic forebear. The poet becomes the
figurative son of the epic poet who scripted his words exalting his poetic patrimony just
as the laudandus, Aristomenes, exalts his family line. In one moment of polyphonic
dissonance, Pindar is joined with seer and poet through his quotational speech, while at
the same time standing in a filial relationship with them as the inheritor of their gifts.
The difficult redoubling of the correspondences produced by the formal structure of
the poets quoted speech is compounded by the content of the speech itself. It is not
without reason that Pindar calls Amphiaraos words riddling (4n&+P4-*). There is much
that is and remains obscure about this dense and intricate speech. Introduced by a gnomic
assertion that a fathers innate noble character is evident also in his sons, Amphiaraos
speaks in almost cryptic terms of the portents that he sees foretelling the fate of his own
son, as well as that of his former comrade, Adrastus, and his son, the here-unnamed
Aegialeus (43-55):
3' #i)# %48&4%0&:&
>? -E 9#&&4K*& ()1)80)#1
(5 )4-08:& )41,W "{%4. ;40*%41 ,4>0' 45
38=5*&-4 )*15+"*& 4n;<' U"5%<&' ()' @,)+3*'
&:%D&-4 )8D-*& (& !=3%*? )6"41'.
~ 3C 54%v& )8*-08t )=;t
&V& @8#+*&*' (&0J#-41
8&1J*' @99#"+t 50
l384,-*' 8:' -E 3C *e5*;#&
@&-+4 )8=P#1. %$&*' 978 (5 B4&4D& ,-84-*V
;4&$&-*' /,-04 "0P41' ?*V, -6Jt ;#D&
@>+P#-41 "4 ,d& @F"4F#K
lF4&-*' #I8?J$8*?' @9?1='. 55

Thus he spoke of the warring men: the noble character of fathers shines forth in
the nature of their sons. I see clearly the variegated serpent on the shining shield
that Alkman wields before the gates of Kadmos. And the hero Adrastus who

)'
Given the few fragments that remain to us of the Thebaid, there is no way to positively
determine the degree to which Pindars quotation allusively engages with its epic model. Based
upon the degree to which such open allusiveness characterizes his other quoted speeches, it is
likely that the passage in question was also marked by strong epic allusion.
251
labored in the earlier struggle now meets with the message of a better bird. But at
home, he will find the opposite. For alone of the host of Danaans he will gather
the bones of his son, by the caprice of the gods he will come to the broad dancing
lanes of Abas with his men unharmed.

It is unclear precisely how the details of Amphiaraos mantic speech bear on the
excellence of Pindars laudandus beyond the initial gnomic assertion.
)(
Yet the close
alignment between the poet and embedded mantis is unequivocal, a connection that is
further emphasized in the closing frame of the speech to which we will soon turn. Within
the speech itself, the poets interest in the seers words can be felt in the multiple layers
of symbols, omens, and prophecy which are laden with markers of scriptory engagement.
Amphiaraos insight into the blazon upon his sons shining shield draws upon the
discourse of scriptory tools as conveyors of encoded meaning. The tool enables
Amphiaraos to reperform his sons nature in his own speech, having gleaned its essence
through his clear vision (;40*%41 ,4>0') of the shield. The similarity between this
single interpretive scene, narrated through an ekphrastic direct speech, and the Redepaare
of Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes, perhaps a signal of a common understanding of a
now-lost passage of the epic Thebaid or of a more direct channel of influence between
the two poets,
))
demonstrates the powerful scriptory figuration associated with the image
of the encoded shield. Yet the well-crafted device of the Pindaric tool does not represent
the destabilizing mimetic warriors of Aeschylus play, but the even more faithfully
mimetic drakn poikilos, whose ability to represent the embodied presence of the warrior
is a symbol of the shared spirit of father and son.
)*

In the second half of the speech, Amphiaraos turns his gaze towards his erstwhile
comrade, Adrastus. The seer reports that the hero is now favored by a better bird
(@8#+*&*' 8&1J*') than attended him in the previous conflict. The mechanism through
which the seer is able to foretell Adrastus survival remains obscure within Amphiaraos
mantic utterance. The avian messenger is not explicitly located either on the warriors
shield or in the air. The uncertainty surrounding this second portent resonates with the

)(
Pfeijffer (1999c) ad loc. On the narratological utility of this prophecy, see Athanassaki (1990)
p. 1034.
))
The connection between the two texts and their relation to an epic predecessor is explored by
Nagy (2000). On the role of Amphiaros in the epic cycle, see Johnston (2008) p. 113.
)*
Cf. my discussion of snakes above, chap. 4.
252
description of the snake, whose vivid form on Alkmans shield is reflected in the
ambiguous adjective poikilos, a term which applies equally to the living serpents
quicksilver appearance and the exceptional craftsmanship with which the metallic device
was wrought. It was this very duality of the snake which allowed Amphiaraos to see
himself in his son. But in the case of Adrastus, the generational connection is as obscure
as the portent itself. For while Adrastus is fated to survive this second expedition against
Thebes, his nostos will be marred by the death of his son. How the opposition of Adrastus
and his son, set antia within the mantis speech, are related to the ominous bird is not
made clear. But the breach of generational continuity seems to lead the poets thoughts
back to his own task, signaled by the dancing streets in which the mourning Adrastus
homecoming is situated. This final detail seems to intimate that Pindars relation to the
past is marked by rupture as much as by connection. The poet shares his voice with the
world of the past, yet he recognizes that patrimony does not always produce identical
results.
This idea of rupture is also contained within the alignment of Amphiaraos, the
embedded speaker, and the poet who transmits his voice anew. As the poet and speaker
fuse their speech in anachronistic harmony, blurring the borders of past, present, and
future,
*+
their shared voice displaces each speaker from the firm context of a hic et nunc.
There can be no continuity where the boundaries of time and space can no longer hold.
The spatio-temporal uncertainty that arises from this vocal blending is intensified by the
ambiguous status of Amphiaraos, whose own locus within the mythical frame is almost
impossible to pin down. In his framing introduction, the poet straightforwardly locates
the seer as present at Thebes: Tq5"0*' )4K' (& j)-4)6"*1' n3c& / ?*d' rAF41' (39-
40). He is an eyewitness to the marshalling Epigonoi, as indeed his own words reflect:
;40*%41 ,4>0' [] &:%D&-4 )8D-*& (& !=3%*? )6"41' (45-7). But despite this
insistence on Amphiaraos spatial proximity to the scene which he describes and
interprets, his relationship to the men before him is far from certain. According to most
traditions, Amphiaraos was either killed or swallowed living into the earth at the time of

*+
The blending of past and present voices is discussed by Nagy (2000) p.194201. The general
temporal instability of the speech is treated by Martin (2004) p. 351.
253
the first Argive attack on Thebes.
*"
Pindar recounts the event, in the latter version, in his
ninth Nemean ode.
*#
This fact is not mentioned or alluded to in any way in Pythian 8, but
a tacit understanding that Amphiaraos does not participate in the second expedition
underpins the entire speech. The figure of Amphiaraos is, like his speech, split between
the past and future, the earth and the underworld, the mortal and the divine. He is no
longer a speaker amongst the living, but returns ghost-like to the site where his spirit lives
on in his son.
*$
The silence surrounding this central narrative detail marks its signal
importance. Amphiaraos displacement from the objects of his speech constitutes a
spatio-temporal transgression analogous to the position of his speech within the poem.
Like Darius, whose separation from the tragic stage of the Persai produced a mise en
abyme that reflected the poets own distance from his work, Amphiaraos spectral
presence at Thebes mirrors Pindars displacement from the future reperformances of his
scriptory creation. Amphiaraos is already unable to fully occupy the present of his initial
utterance beside the Theban gates. All the more so, then, the mimetic reperformance of
his speech within the epinician song destabilizes the idea that an author may be truly
present to express his own words.
Yet for all of the uncertainty about Amphiaraos status, the passage is remarkable for
the overt connection drawn between the poet and the embedded speaker. So closely
intertwined are present and past at both the beginning and end of the myth that it is
difficult to locate the joints at which the embedded tale can be excerpted from the frame.
This blurring of spatio-temporal boundaries through the shared speech of seer and poet is
most evident at the conclusion of the oratio recta, where Pindar unmistakably expresses
his identification with the speaker (55-7):
-*14V-4 %0& 55
(>;09P4-' U%>1=8O*'. J4+8:& 3C 54W 4I-$'
U"5%<&4 ,-#>=&*1,1 F="":, 4+&: 3C 54W g%&L
Thus did Amphiaraos speak. And I too delight to pelt Alkmaon with garlands, and
to sprinkle him with song


*"
Gentili and Bernardini (1995) pp. 573-4.
*#
N.9.24-7, also N.10.8-9.
*$
For the argument that Amphiaraos sees into the future from the time of the first Argive attack,
see Van 'T Wout (2006).
254
The poet shares in the charis of his embedded speaker and embraces their common voice
even as he returns to inhabit his own first-person expression. But in this remarkable
closing frame Pindar does not claim to take up the words of Amphiaraos to fittingly
praise his laudandus, as he did at the opening of the speech. Now Pindars garlands of
song are directed at the long-dead Theban warrior whom the ghostly Amphiaraos once
praised. Alkman has taken the place of Aristomenes in Pindars hic et nunc. It is as if the
poet has entered into the mythical landscape, as though the vividness of his oratio recta
has allowed the past to replace the present.
The conflation is not without its own motives. For straight away we learn that
Pindars uncanny harmony with the world of the past is not simply a product of his own
desire to move into the world of his poem, but equally of the ability of these mythical
figures to reach into the world of the poet. In the final lines of the excursus, what Pfeijffer
has dubbed the coda to the myth,
*%
the poet recounts how Alkman once appeared to
him as he traveled the road to Delphi.
*&
It is because of this encounter that Pindar so
willingly adopts Alkman as the object of his song (56-60):
J4+8:& 3C 54W 4I-$'
U"5%<&4 ,-#>=&*1,1 F="":, 4+&: 3C 54W g%&L,
9#+-:& N-1 %*1 54W 5-#=&:& >6"4P (%D&
H)=&-4,#& n$&-1 9<' /%>4"E& )48' @*+31%*&,
%4&-#?%=-:& -' (>=p4-* ,?99$&*1,1 -0J&41'. 60

And I too delight to pelt Alkman with garlands, and to sprinkle him with song,
since he is my neighbor and guardian of my possessions who once encountered
me as I journeyed to the songful navel of the earth, and he set about his inborn
skill of prophecy.


*%
Pfeijffer (1999c) states that this section of the ode (55-60) functions as a kind of coda after
the myth. A transition is made from heroic past to present; Alcmaeon, who featured in the myth,
becomes the topic of the following section. He is dealt with from the poets personal
perspective. p. 540.
*&
The figure of the apparition is not specifically identified by the poet. It is generally accepted
that Alkman, named in the preceding line, is the person referred to, but the possibility that
Amphiaraos may be intended has been forcefully argued by Hubbard (1993). The attraction of the
latter option is clear given the close correlation between the poet and seer up to this point, but I
believe that such an interpretation requires an unacceptable strain on the syntax of the text.
Further, Hubbards reading would obviate the thematic resonance of the final assertion of
Alkmans mantic patrimony (%4&-#?%=-:& -' (>=p4-* ,?99$&*1,1 -0J&41'), which recalls
Amphiaraos earlier claim that Alkman has inherited his fathers noble nature.
255
The epiphanic coda re-enacts the formal structure of the speech, bringing poet and
mythical figure into the same spatio-temporal plane, though now the juxtaposition is
brought about through the ghostly apparition of the dead hero rather than the poets own
verbal acrobatics.
*'
The encounter effaces the spatio-temporal distinctions within the
poem, allowing the disparate planes to be united in the poets own past. The only clear
separation is between the past of Pindars journey and the present circumstances of his
laudandus. Pindar distances himself from the hic et nunc celebration and aligns himself
with the transient dead who appear from beyond as guardians along the paths of song.
The metaphoric physicality of his song, an object with which Pindar can pelt and
sprinkle Alkmaon, merges with the physical possessions over which Alkman keeps guard.
The path that the poet travels to Delphi, the earths songful center, is a correlate to the
deuteran hodos of the Epigonoi and also to the broad-dancing streets (#I8?J$8*?'
@9?1=' 55) to which Adradtus will return. The resonance ties the ghostly encounter to
Pindars own act of poetic creation. But the poet is dislocated even within the insistent
material and spatial grounding of the coda. His poetic power is unshaken, but his location
in both time and space has come to be unmoored. The world of the dead is more vivid to
him than that of the living, and he too is drawn into this shadow space, removed from the
hic et nunc of his poem even as he asserts his own voice within its reperformance.
*(
The
resulting confusion is expressed at the conclusion of the ode (95-100):
()=%#8*1 -+ 30 -1'; -+ 3' *} -1'; ,51<' &48 95
[&;8:)*'. @""' N-4& 4e9"4 31$,3*-*' Q";b,
"4%)8E& >099*' Q)#,-1& @&38D& 54W %#+"1J*' 4nc&.
e91&4 >+"4 %<-#8, ("#?;08L ,-$"L
)$"1& -=&3# 5$%1y# BW 54W 580*&-1 ,d& n45
sO"#K -# 5@94; S#"4%D&1 ,6& -' UJ1""#K. 100

Men of a day, what is a man, and what is not? Man is the dream of a shade. But
whenever god-given splendor arrives, men enjoy the shining light and gentle life.
O my dear mother, Aegina, care for this city on its free sailing with Zeus and
great Aiakos and Peleus and with noble Telamon and Achilles.


*'
On the nature of the apparition, see Kirkwood (1982) pp. 210-1.
*(
[T]he poet is not dead. But in a way that the performance of this poem, more than most,
makes astoundingly clear, he is the voice of the dead. Martin (2004) p. 354.
256
The apostrophe, epameroi, opens Pindars address to an unusually broad audience.
*)
The
poet turns his gaze toward the whole of mankind, each life bound by a proverbial day but
joined together in their perpetually circumscribed re-emergence. Pindar has stepped into
the world of the shades, but man too is nothing more than a shadow;
**
a dream vision that
blurs the boundaries of identity and presence. And yet, within this extreme expression of
the unstable mutability of the poets voice through the polyphony of his scripted song, the
poet also finds solid ground once more in the island of Aegina, the site of his victors
birth.
"++
Now, with an apostrophe to the land herself, Pindar calls upon the glorious past
of the island, invoking the Aiakid heroes whose tales he passed over earlier in the ode.
But even this closing gesture does not fix the poet in time or space, for his words send the
polis, deictically located under his metaphoric feet, sailing across the waves on a free
voyage (("#?;08L ,-$"L) that joins the poet with the great heroes of Aeginas past. In
this perpetual journey across the pathless sea the poet steps into the unstable world of his
scriptory song. Man is the dream of a shade, but as the uncertain genitive of the laconic
gnome reveals, even that definition cannot tell us whether we are dreaming of ghosts or
are ourselves a dream within the ghosts own mind.
"+"

The unmooring of Pindars poetic voice and the related existential confusion
expressed in the final lines of the ode arise centrally from the poets concern with the
scriptory nature of his composition. The polyphony of countless scenarios for
reperformance is refracted through the poets own voice, displacing him from the hic et
nunc and compelling him to consider the ghostly role that he is destined to play in the
future of his scriptory composition. The poetic work is never complete, but exists within
a process of embodied reperformances, mediated through the scriptory tool. This
scriptory world is an echo chamber of manifold points in time and space, but
underpinning this polyphony the absent poet continues to emerge as the unseen originator
of and ghostly presence in his song.

*)
Toohey (1987) p. 75.
**
The connection between this final gnome and the apparitions of the myth and its integration
into the realm of the narrator is nicely made by Lefkowitz (1977) p. 216. For the reading of ,51=
as ghost, see Nagy (1990) p. 195.
"++
Martin (2004) p. 357.
"+"
I.e. the genitive can be equally well understood to function as subjective or objective within
the construction. See the discussion of Toohey (1987) p. 78, with bibliography.
257
As Pindars eighth Pythian reveals, the complex matrix of scriptory models functions
to establish a unique role for the poet. He cannot comfortably inhabit the eternal hic et
nunc of ephemeral performance, but neither can he imagine his poem to be fully detached
from himself, as an autonomous written object. The scriptory poet needs to situate
himself between these poles, a ghostly presence that allows him to occupy his
composition without compromising the absence on which its spatio-temporal mobility
rests. Both Pindar and Aeschylus explore the qualities of this model of spectral authorship
in their work, illuminating the unsettling as well as enthralling possibilities that it has
introduced. The parameters for this investigation are determined by the formal constraints
of genre: while the lyric poet questions the stability of his first-person voice, the dramatic
playwright seeks a role for himself amongst the many characters of the stage. Yet the
essential challenge that confronts both poets is the same: to find a place for the poet
within the world of the script.
258
CONCLUSION

This study has set out to demonstrate that a comparative examination of the poetry of
Pindar and Aeschylus reveals their shared approach to the critical question facing the
practitioners of choral melos in the first half of the fifth century. As the practice of
reperformance, and with it the role of writing, became an increasingly decisive element
of the poets world, Pindar and Aeschylus developed a scriptory poetics which allowed
them to explore the implications of this new poetic landscape in their works. Their
approach to this concern diverged from the paths taken by contemporaries, who were
confronting the same question in a range of different ways. Yet Pindar and Aeschylus
pursued the issue in a strikingly connected manner, despite the manifest distinctions
between the poetic forms in which they worked.
Within the fragments of Simonides wide-ranging corpus, we see writing explored as
a question from a more concrete, materially aware perspective, developing a play on the
relationship between the plastic arts and poetry that has remained a vital strand within
poetics to this day. Bacchylides, by contrast, seems to have eschewed a direct
confrontation with the written character of his poetry, opting rather to engage in
heterodox experiments with formal possibilities of vocal expression. Sophocles placed
writing center-stage, with many kinds of written text readily and it would seem
unproblematically incorporated into his tragic dramas. Working alongside these other
poets, Pindar and Aeschylus are linked by their desire to invent their own, distinctively
poetic understanding of the written word, one that would look to the functional resources
of the script as a medium not just for the transmission of words but for the transformation
of poetic voice.
As we have seen, the question at the heart of Pindars and Aeschylus scriptory
poetics is how a poetic composition can retain both its capacity for oral performance and
its connection with an authors voice once it has been entrusted to a material script.
Through the manipulation of dictional modes and the figurative representation of the
multiform nature of their scriptory poems, Pindar and Aeschylus draw attention to the
expressive transformations that informed and motivated their poetic work. The often
dizzying complexity of their scriptory representations is a mark of these poets fervent
259
desire to bring their developing vision of a scriptory world more fully into view. To
expose their scriptory foundations, these compositions upend and disrupt the stable plane
of their performative reality, questioning the very voices through which they speak. But
from the paradoxical perspectives and discordant harmonies of this unstable realm of the
script, Pindar and Aeschylus are able to create a poetic landscape of captivating and
subtle beauty. And through the destabilizing force of their scriptory poetics they ensure
that their own voices would be able to speak clearly across a span of time that even they
could not have imagined, as they continue to command our wonder and attention after
many centuries.
The broader implications of this argument, on which I offer some preliminary
thoughts, point in a number of directions. The first centers on the position that Pindar and
Aeschylus occupy in our historical conception of Greek literature. In view of the
originality of their scriptory poetics, we are, I think, invited to review long-held
assumptions about the archaic or traditional nature of these poets work. Despite their
often archaizing language, neither Pindar nor Aeschylus was archaic in his mindset.
Rather, products of an age in which the Greek Mediterranean underwent significant,
wide-reaching changes in nearly every area of public and private life, they were
themselves involved in a radical rethinking of the art of poetry.
A second, related point concerns methodological assumptions which have often led
scholars to segregate these poets. By taking seriously the fact of their contemporaneity,
we not least question the premium that recent scholarship has placed on genre and
performance contexts as determinative of poetic form. In relation to a world of
Panhellenic reperformance, in which poets actively anticipated even lived to see the
varied future of their compositions, we ought to beware of artificially circumscribing the
poets aims to a unique performance context. Somewhat thornier, but equally important,
is the issue of generic identity. There is of course much to be gained from attending to the
specific attributes and strategies emerging within distinct genres. At the same time,
readings based entirely on generic properties can easily obscure or elide important
questions that do not express themselves in generically identifiable or motivated features.
This point is especially pertinent to the fifth century, when the growing popularity of so
260
many new forms of poetry, most obviously tragedy, encouraged the transgression of
traditional generic boundaries as an important avenue of poetic creativity.
Perhaps most centrally, I hope this study may point to the need for a more balanced
understanding of the role that writing played for the poetic imagination of the ancient
world. We have, for many decades, been caught within a binary opposition between
writing and orality that has distorted and balkanized discussions of the subject. Even
those who do not see writing and orality as placed in opposition, have remained with
certain notable exceptions tacitly resistant to embracing the written word as an integral
feature of our ancient poetry. I hope that the readings presented in this dissertation may
contribute to a still emerging appreciation of how attention to writing can enrich our
understanding of the Greek poetic world.
261
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